They contained music videos, some for tracks featured on the accompanying album and others for tracks not on the album. Previously, the series had been available on vinyl, cassette and MiniDisc, until these formats declined in popularity. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. By 1989, Now, Hits, and other various-artist compilation albums were occupying such a large fraction of the UK Albums Chart that a separate UK Compilation Chart was created to restrict the Albums Chart to releases by a single act.

On 26 April 2010, Now Mix 2010 was released, which includes dance versions of popular songs in a non-stop mix format.

From the Now 2 through Now 21, the compilation was always done on a rotation system among the three music companies. The very first Now album was released in November 1983, back when such compilations of current hits were relatively rare. As well as the Now regular series there have also been spin-offs including Now Big Hits, Now Christmas, Now Summer, Now Clubbing, Now Dance and Now Hip Hop.

It was released on vinyl and audio cassette, with a re-release on CD in 2009 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the album. 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? The series took its name from a 1920s British advertising poster for Danish Bacon featuring a pig saying "Now. From the years of 1996 to 2009 the series released an annual compilation usually in the late summer months.At least two different series of year-by-year "retrospective" compilations, covering 1983 to 1995 and 1980 to 1999, respectively were issued in the 1990s with the latter series known as Now! My teenage years were the 80's and I had the first ten on vinyl along with the original, and best, NOW Christmas album. 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). The album went to number one, and soon after, CBS/ WEA's The Hits Album adopted a similar format to Now! Now 08 was the last of this series however a second series took over this time with seasons instead of volumes for example Now Winter 2005, Now Spring 2005.