Peel's Night Ride show grew out of an idea by producer John Muir for a "non-needletime" programme drawing on the BBC's store of archive recordings from around the world. This meant that not only were the shows cheaper to produce (because no royalty payments were needed), but that they also reflected the hippy era's growing interest in exotic cultures. Most of the archive material was by unknown artists and had been recorded by national radio stations or folklorists, rather than for commercial release. After Night Ride finished in September 1969, there was a positive audience response to some of the "Archive Things", as Peel would call the World Music archive material, so a selection of the most popular pieces appeared on the John Peel's Archive Things LP a year later.