Oldies is a term commonly used to describe a radio format that concentrates on a period 15 to 55 years before the present day.

In the 1980s and 1990s, "oldies" meant the 15 years from the birth of rock n roll to the beginning of the singer-songwriter era of the early 1970s, or about 1955 to 1971.

In the early 2000s, 1970s music was increasingly included, and 1980s music is beginning to also be called "oldies", though the term "classic hits" is used to distinguish the new oldies from the Baby Boomer oldies.

Description

Oldies tunes are typically from R&B, pop and rock music genres. Country, jazz, classical music, and other formats are generally not considered oldies music, although some of those genres have their own oldies format (for instance, classic country), and a number of songs "crossed over" from country to Top 40. Occasionally the term is used to describe the rare station that includes 1940s music as well, although music from before 1955 (coinciding with the "birth of rock'n'roll"), is typically the domain of the adult standards format. However, the term constitutes ambiguity for people who like old dancing music.

This format is sometimes called Golden Oldies (after another album series of the same name, which was sold through bulk TV commercials), though this term usually refers to music exclusively from the '50s and early '60s. Oldies radio typically features artists such as Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Supremes, The Four Seasons, and Sam Cooke; as well as such musical movements and genres as doo-wop, soul music, Motown, the British Invasion, early girl groups, surf music, and bubblegum pop.

Most traditional oldies stations limit their on-air playlists to no more than 300 songs, on the philosophy that average listeners will stay tuned provided they're familiar with the hits being played. The drawback to this concept is the endless repetition of the station's program library. Oldies has some overlap with the classic rock format, which concentrates on the rock music of the late-'60s and '70s and also plays newer material made in the same style.

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1970s

Oldies stations as we know them today did not really come into existence until the early 1970s. In the 1970s, KOOL-FM in Phoenix, Arizona became one of the first radio stations to play oldies music, at that time focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s. KOOL is still playing oldies today.

In the 1960s very few Top 40 Radio stations played anything older than a few years old. In the late 1960s a few FM stations adopted Top 40 formats that leaned towards adults who did not want to hear the same 30 songs over and over again but also did not want to hear easy listening music featured on MOR radio stations. They mixed in oldies with their current product and played new music only several times per hour. These radio stations were often referred to as "Golden" or "Solid Gold" stations. Some AM radio stations also began to employ this format. There were also syndicated music format packages such as Drake-Chenault's "Solid Gold" format, frequently used on FM stations that needed separate programming from their AM sisters due to the new FCC rules on simulcasting, that functioned as a hybrid of oldies and the adult contemporary and softer rock hits of the day. The popularity of the movie American Graffiti is often credited with helping to spur the 1950s nostalgia movement of the early 1970s, and it was out of this 1950s nostalgia movement that some of these stations, such as WHND/WHNE "Honey Radio" in Detroit, WCBS-FM in New York, WQSR Baltimore, and WROR in Boston, sprang up and were classified as Oldies stations and not Adult Top 40 stations. These stations, however, did play current product sparingly (one or two per hour) throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s; WCBS-FM, for example, played current hits under the moniker "Future Gold" as late as the late 1980s, and WLNG on nearby Long Island featured a roughly 50/50 mix of current hits and oldies from the early 1960s until about 1999. WGAR in Cleveland and KRLA 1110 in Los Angeles were other examples of Top 40 stations with heavy oldies orientations; KRLA was in fact promoted in the 1970s as the "Elvis-to-Elton" station.