Beautiful music initially offered soft and unobtrusive instrumental selections on a very structured schedule with limited commercial interruptions. It often functioned as a free background music service for stores, with commercial breaks consisting only of announcements aimed at shoppers already in the stores. This practice was known as storecasting and was very common on the FM dial in the 1940s and 1950s.

Many of these FM stations usually simulcast their AM station and used a subcarrier (SCA), to transmit a hitch-hiker signal to a store receiver by subscription. The signal was usually a slow-moving audio tape of 'background music' or Muzak-type service, which was independent of the simulcast AM signal.

Some FM stations made more income from these music subscriptions than from their main programming. WITH-FM, in Baltimore, Maryland (1950s and 1960s), had to keep its FM carrier on the air until 2 a.m. for restaurant subscribers, and could not sign-off the main FM carrier until that time and thus had to run a repeat of its previous day's evening concert on its main FM program line.

In the early 1960s, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a standard for transmitting and receiving stereo signals on a single channel of the FM band. In addition to delivering stereo sound, FM broadcasting provided a clearer sound quality and better resistance to interference than AM, thus being the ideal vehicle for broadcasting the beautiful music format.

In 1963, Marlin Taylor created a custom-designed beautiful music format at Philadelphia's WDVR-FM, and within four months, WDVR became the #1 rated FM station in the Philadelphia market, becoming not only one of the first big successes in FM broadcasting but instrumental in establishing the viability of the FM band. WDVR was a resource for mature listeners who were driven away from AM radio at the time when WFIL and WIBG (and others) were going to rock 'n' roll programming. WDVR's many large roadside billboards made the adult audience aware of the new station.

Another pioneer of the Beautiful Music format was KIXL-FM in Dallas, Texas, which operated at "104 on both dials" (1040 AM and 104.5 FM) during the 1950s and 1960s. Pronounced "Kixil" on the air, KIXL was well-known for seamlessly blending one song into another with the help of specially designed instrumental bridges. They were also known for a popular feature called "Think It Over", in which the smooth-voiced announcer softly intoned a proverb or a word of wisdom, followed by a short pause and the admonition, "Think it over."

Inspired by the success of KIXL, Gordon McLendon - best known for programming Top 40-formatted KLIF, the top-rated station in Dallas throughout the 1950s and 1960s - decided to start up a beautiful music station of his own in the San Francisco market. He took over KROW-AM, licensed to nearby Oakland, and revamped it with a Beautiful Music format as KABL (pronounced "cable").

Other pioneers of the format included WPAT-AM/FM in Paterson, New Jersey, which served the New York market; WJBR-FM in Wilmington, Delaware, whose signal reached Philadelphia (home of WDVR); and WQMR-AM/WGAY-FM, which served the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area; WLDM and WOMC in Detroit, Michigan; WLRW in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, the first stereo FM station in Champaign County and a storecaster for Eisner grocery stores; KBMI-AM "The Beautiful Music Island" in Las Vegas; and KUMU AM-FM in Honolulu; KWXY "delightfully different" in Palm Springs, California which has served the Coachella Valley since 1964.

Others, such as Jim Schulke, devised a method of buying air time on FM stations in bulk and reselling the blocks to interested advertisers. Schulke formed Stereo Radio Productions (SRP) to help his stations get better ratings and pull in more agency advertising dollars. His stations used six hundred 10+1⁄2-inch-diameter (270 mm) reels of stereo reel-to-reel tape set on multiple machines so that 15 minute segments would play at a time, alternating from one player to another, allowing a varied programming format in which no half-hour was repeated within a two-week period. One of Schulke's stations using this "matched flow" concept was WDVR's chief competitor in the beautiful music format in Philadelphia, WWSH-FM.

Some group station owners created their own "in-house" format distribution system. Bonneville Broadcasting Systems serviced mostly Bonneville-owned stations, with easy listening music distributed first on reel-to-reel tape and compact disc, and later adopted satellite distribution, often under the slogan "Satellite Stereo" (as was used by Malrite Communications'. WEZO-FM in Rochester, New York, was one of the independent radio stations signed with Bonneville.)