Disco records seem to be mostly Promos

[Allan]

Why are so many disco lp's and 12" promos.
It seems there are more promos than commercial releases

[Mixmachine]

I'd venture to say that most promos were (and are) owned by music industry people (DJ's, Collectors, producers, radio,promoters) and music lovers, the majority of regular retail copies sold were discarded long ago by the casual listeners that moved on to the latest trendy sound.(and CD); In this board we are all music lovers(especially disco) but I'm afraid that most of the public does not share our enthusiasm, they definitely don’t hold on to vinyl for 25 years like many of us here do.

[BrunoRepublic]

I second that. Some radio stations hold on to their promo copies for decades, even though they might not have played them more than a couple times when they first came out. Used record stores that specialize in disco often buy collections from retired DJs, so this is where a lot of these old promos are coming from. And many 12"s, especially earlier ones, were only issued as promos in the first place.

There are some records were promos are actually much more commonplace than commercial copies. The "Lightning" album on Casablanca is one such example. Casablanca sent out hundreds to DJs and radio stations, but the album was a flop, and deleted almost immediately after it was released. Most of the copies that actually made it to the stores were sent back, and ground up for recycling. Only a handful of commercial copies are known to exist today.

[DJ Bozo]

In the early to mid 80's (and maybe late 70's), often dance tracks were released as promos to DJ's and the like and based on feedback, the companies decided what to release commercially. Many tracks were never available commercially. (and most of it was junk anyway) I recall getting promos often 6+ months before it was available for purchase. Towards the mid 80's, that pretty much died and we got the tunes around the same time as the stores did.

I remember having to listen to 50+ singles a month with maybe only 4 or 5 being decent. Course I never had to go back and pull a record out of my trash bin because it got popular later on. :)