The compilation series was conceived in the office of Virgin Records in London and took its name from a 1920s British advertising poster for Danish bacon featuring a pig saying "Now. The Australian series is a single disc edition and began in 2002, as a replacement for the long-running 100% Hits brand. In 2010, it was announced that total sales of the series, not counting the extra editions, topped one million copies in Portugal. Due to the Universal Music Group's purchasing of EMI in 2012, a share of the Now albums' rights were transferred over to Sony Music Entertainment (a partner in the original Hits Album brand).

Virgin agreed to a deal with EMI, which allowed a greater number of major hits to be included (the first album in the series included a total of "eleven number ones" on its sleeve). Below the texts, next to the vocabulary lists, you find Exercises which are suitable for the grammar and the vocabulary presented in the actual text or previous texts. The very first Now album was released in November 1983, back when such compilations of current hits were relatively rare. The first six chapters have texts mainly focused on the characters Ken, Anna, Maria, Peter, Desta and Yuhang.

The concept was taken to Simon Draper (managing director at Virgin Records) and then Peter Jamieson (managing director of EMI Records (1983–1986)). From the Now 2 through Now 21, the compilation was always done on a rotation system among the three music companies. Never appeared on any of the numbered NOW albums but did appear on Now 1983 in the 10th Anniversary Series.

Branson wrote, "He was notoriously grumpy before breakfast and loved his eggs in the morning, so I bought him the poster, framed it and had it hung behind his desk. The last four chapters have texts that deal more with different topics (like family and spare time).

It is a great cd and I have always loved the now cd collection so it is nice that they made a number one collection and have all the greatest hits in one. Through Volume 21 of the series, the multi-volume sets have included 414 national and international artists and a total of 787 different songs, ranking in an impressive four gold and 19 platinum records. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

The idea for the first album in the series came from Virgin Records boss Richard Branson and his associate Simon Draper. though spin-offs like NOW presents the 70s was being released as a five LP vinyl boxset by Sony/EMI in 2021. In what instances should I use which based off of what result I might want to get, or ultimately does it really matter which I use? Targeting a broad age group, the channel used to play current popular music in the daytime and hits from its 30-year back catalogue in the evenings.

However, in late 2009, EMI Music released the album "Now Dance" in Spain, which contains all the biggest dance hits in Spain during 2009, including Lady Gaga, David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland, The Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry, among others. They now focus on radio mixes of recent dance hits, and a Very Best of Now Dance compilation has been released. has released 61 physical albums since 1997, the latest one released July 2020 and further albums were released on streaming platforms only.