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The song "I am the beat" by the band "The Look" is notable because when it was issued as a vinyl single, it was engineered so that the run-out groove, rather than silence, contained the word "Beat!..." which looped until you lifted the stylus.

Is there a way of achieving the same effect using modern music delivery systems? In other words, is there any way of creating an audio file or stream or CD or whatever that can infinitely loop its final second of audio?

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  • What do you mean by “modern music delivery systems”? Do you mean modern vinyl mastering or do you mean like streaming and mp3s?
    – Todd Wilcox
    Jun 25, 2018 at 12:35
  • I know you can do it with vinyl. Is there any way of creating an audio file or stream or CD or whatever that can infinitely loop its final second of audio?
    – Brian THOMAS
    Jun 25, 2018 at 12:56
  • Using a looper to make an infinite loop to start with, then re-recording it onto a CD or mp3 might do it.
    – Tim
    Jun 25, 2018 at 13:32
  • What an interesting idea! Sorry to state the obvious @Tim, but you couldn't record an infinite loop on anything, as any medium (CD, HD etc.) has a finite amount of space. I guess you could have a final track, that the penultimate track leads straight into, which has meta-information setting the track to repeat. But I'm pretty sure you can't have this kind of meta-information in an audio file. If you could, everybody would put one in, so people had to listen to their track over and over again!
    – Bob Broadley
    Jun 25, 2018 at 14:47
  • Reminds me of a story I heard about radio presenters working in local radio "forgetting" to cancel the switch that changes car radios back from traffic news, so that everybody keeps listening to their station!
    – Bob Broadley
    Jun 25, 2018 at 14:48

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I know on Beck's album Odelay the last track is a loop that always reminded me of the sound of a vinyl record hitting the label over and over ("Riding the label"), but more digital sounding, if you can imagine that.

You can't, as far as i know make an mp3, cd, etc loop the last second infinitely. You can however create a loop and turn that in to a track that takes up the remaining time on the CD, for example. For an Mp3 you can do the same, but the length of course would need to be decided...if I bought an album with an excessively long track like this I probably would delete that track, so keep that in mind.'

EDIT: The Beck track i mention is actually a hidden track at the end called "Computer Rock"...The youtube:

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  • The video link looks dead.
    – Dom ♦
    Mar 14 at 11:49

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