B-side

In recorded music, the terms A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 7 inch vinyl records on which singles have been released since the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song (the one that the record producer hopes will receive radio airplay and become a "hit"), while the B-side, or "flipside," is secondary.

History

In the era of the 78 rpm shellac records A-sides and B-sides existed, but for the most part radio stations would play either side of the record, and records often had more than one track per side. The "side" did not convey anything about the content of the record.

Related Topics:
Rpm - Shellac - Radio station

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The terms came into popular use with the advent of 45 rpm vinyl records in the early 1950s. It became conventional to release "singles" containing two songs, one on each side of the record. At first, most record labels would randomly assign which song would be an A-side and which would be a B-side. Because of this, many artists had so-called "double-sided hits", where both songs on a record made one of the national sales charts (in Billboard, Cashbox or other magazines), or would be featured on jukeboxes in public places.

Related Topics:
Record label - Billboard - Cashbox - Jukebox

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As time wore on, however, the convention for assigning songs to sides of the record changed. Generally, the song on the A-side was the song that the record company wanted radio stations to play. By the mid-1970s double-sided singles had become rare. Album sales had increased, and B-sides had become the side of the record where non-album tracks or inferior recordings were placed.

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The advent of cassette and compact disc singles in the late 1980s spelled the beginning of the end for the A side/B side differentiation. At first cassette singles would often have one song on each side of the cassette, matching the arrangement of vinyl records, but eventually cassette maxi-singles, containing more than two songs, became more popular. With the decline of cassette singles in the 1990s, the A-side/B-side dichotomy became virtually extinct, as the remaining dominant medium, the compact disc, lacks an equivalent physical distinction. However, the term B-side is still frequently used to refer to the "bonus" tracks on a CD single.

Related Topics:
Cassette - Compact disc - 1980s - Maxi-single - 1990s

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