This is why stores would let you listen to it before purchasing
Yea I remember when people would just stand around the headphone booths in music stores and sample whatever new CDs came out that week. Maybe it was worse in the cassette tape era?
The headphones were gross. And to be honest, most albums only have a couple good songs anyway.
It was always like that, wasnt it? Albums would have that one headline track that everyone wanted and then 7 bullshit tracks and one or two tracks that kinda sounded like the good track, as if they were the discarded parts that they decided to cut and stitch into a song to fill up the cd.
1999 CDs were typically $20 - $30 so it was actually worse. This was what you would pay at a Sam Goody, Camelot Music, FYE etc.
It wasn’t until a few years later that CD prices were cheaper. You could go to Wal-Mart and get cheaper prices, but you would be buying censored or edited albums.
I remember the Wal-Mart release of Eminem’s second album was missing the entire song of Kim for example, just completely replaced.
I think a lot of people who post about the nineties weren’t spending their own money or something, because I remember how pricey music was, and cherished each CD.
I still have some of my CDs from the nineties.
Yeah you can’t really censor Kim lol. At least it was replaced with a new song (a South-Park-parody drug-PSA for kids) and not something from the first album.
I think streaming makes music a “throwaway” product.
I well and fondly remember when a new album of my favorite band came out and I met friends at the music store to listen and buy it from my saved pocket money. And I still habe most of these albums… and I still listen to them… all though they live on my music players hdd permanently
Streaming allowed me to discover 1700 songs that I love. It gave me the opportunity to enjoy countless genres. Now I export my liked songs to a spreadsheet so I never lose them. I wouldn’t be able to do that otherwise. It’s done great things for my music listening.
what.cd’s (RIP) big music spider tree was that for me. Artist I like? At the the bottom of the page, a buncha of others like them.
Where were you getting albums from popular bands/artists for $10 in '99? That shit was approaching $20 or more when Napster finally took care of those assholes.
Wasn’t 1999 the peak of the price gouging from the record labels? It was like $20-25 for a new album for a ton of the major record labels from what I remember.
