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K-tel Software
Worldwide
K-TEL SOFTWARE, INC.
11311 K-tel Drive
Minnetonka
MN 55343.
Distributed in Canada, 1670 Inkster Blvd., Winnipeg, Manatoba R2X2W8.
In Australia, 46 Pyrmont Bridge Road, Pyrmont, N.S.W. 2009 Australia.
In New Zealand, P.O. Box 2614, Auckland, 1 New Zealand.
K-tel Software and K-TEK are trademarks of K-tel International.
Founded by Phil Kives, K-Tel Vision was the software arm of that same K-Tel company that hawked disco compilations and teflon pots and pans on late night TV.
In the mid-80's, K-Tel branched out into real estate investment, film production (spaghetti westerns), and videogame software among other things.
This led to losses of $60 million in 1984 and bankruptcy in 1986.
Some software was also marketed under the name Front Runner, a short lived attempt at reviving their software division.
K-Tel eventually bounced back and their stock price skyrocketed with the announcement that they would sell music online, but this never came to be and the shareholders were ultimately burned while the founder and president made millions.
Before their great crash in the mid-80's, K-Tel left us with two Atari 2600 games that were distributed in Canada and Europe.
Both feature unusual handles on the cartridge case, and are very hard to find, especially in the US.
K-Tel also distributed Xonox games overseas.
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EDIT HBH: IDK where the above info comes from but it's faulty on many points. K-tel are still active (k-tel.com/).
Founded in 1962 K-tel International Ltd is a Canadian company which formerly specialized in selling consumer products through infomercials and live demonstration. Its products include compilation music albums, including The Super Hits series, The Dynamic Hits series and The Number One Hits series and consumer products, including the Record Selector, the Veg-O-Matic, the Miracle Brush, and the Feather Touch Knife. The company has sold more than half a billion units worldwide.
Today K-tel distributes 200,000 songs worldwide per year on digital platforms, including Amazon, Spotify and iTunes, and licenses songs from its catalogue for use in commercials
Being primarly a record company: "K-tel helped define the way people purchased music in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2013, Forbes wrote a piece on K-tel, entitled "K-Tel Records: The Spotify of the 70s", pointing out that the way people discovered new music in the 70s was through K-tel compilations, in the same way that Spotify playlists are now used to find related artists"
-----------------------C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R---G-A-M-E-S---P-E-R-I-O-D---------------------------------------------
In the early 1980s, K-tel dabbled in the video game business under the brands K-tel Software, K-tek Software, K-tel International (UK) Ltd. and Xonox. Although K-tel's other divisions left this market after the crash of 1983, K-tel UK continued to release several games into 1984.
TRIVIA:
2023: Phil Kives, K-Tel International founder, dies at 87 (Source: cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/phil-kives-k-tel-winnipeg-obit-1.3556818).
A good source is the WIKIPEDIA page + countless other pages dedicated to the company's history.
11311 K-tel Drive
Minnetonka
MN 55343.
Distributed in Canada, 1670 Inkster Blvd., Winnipeg, Manatoba R2X2W8.
In Australia, 46 Pyrmont Bridge Road, Pyrmont, N.S.W. 2009 Australia.
In New Zealand, P.O. Box 2614, Auckland, 1 New Zealand.
K-tel Software and K-TEK are trademarks of K-tel International.
Founded by Phil Kives, K-Tel Vision was the software arm of that same K-Tel company that hawked disco compilations and teflon pots and pans on late night TV.
In the mid-80's, K-Tel branched out into real estate investment, film production (spaghetti westerns), and videogame software among other things.
This led to losses of $60 million in 1984 and bankruptcy in 1986.
Some software was also marketed under the name Front Runner, a short lived attempt at reviving their software division.
K-Tel eventually bounced back and their stock price skyrocketed with the announcement that they would sell music online, but this never came to be and the shareholders were ultimately burned while the founder and president made millions.
Before their great crash in the mid-80's, K-Tel left us with two Atari 2600 games that were distributed in Canada and Europe.
Both feature unusual handles on the cartridge case, and are very hard to find, especially in the US.
K-Tel also distributed Xonox games overseas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT HBH: IDK where the above info comes from but it's faulty on many points. K-tel are still active (k-tel.com/).
Founded in 1962 K-tel International Ltd is a Canadian company which formerly specialized in selling consumer products through infomercials and live demonstration. Its products include compilation music albums, including The Super Hits series, The Dynamic Hits series and The Number One Hits series and consumer products, including the Record Selector, the Veg-O-Matic, the Miracle Brush, and the Feather Touch Knife. The company has sold more than half a billion units worldwide.
Today K-tel distributes 200,000 songs worldwide per year on digital platforms, including Amazon, Spotify and iTunes, and licenses songs from its catalogue for use in commercials
Being primarly a record company: "K-tel helped define the way people purchased music in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2013, Forbes wrote a piece on K-tel, entitled "K-Tel Records: The Spotify of the 70s", pointing out that the way people discovered new music in the 70s was through K-tel compilations, in the same way that Spotify playlists are now used to find related artists"
-----------------------C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R---G-A-M-E-S---P-E-R-I-O-D---------------------------------------------
In the early 1980s, K-tel dabbled in the video game business under the brands K-tel Software, K-tek Software, K-tel International (UK) Ltd. and Xonox. Although K-tel's other divisions left this market after the crash of 1983, K-tel UK continued to release several games into 1984.
TRIVIA:
2023: Phil Kives, K-Tel International founder, dies at 87 (Source: cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/phil-kives-k-tel-winnipeg-obit-1.3556818).
A good source is the WIKIPEDIA page + countless other pages dedicated to the company's history.