this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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in 1999 you had the ability to get into a music shop, load the cd and test listen to it. Or just go through the music charts. Or wish for a specific song on radio.
Also 1999 already had Napster, Morpheus and others.
A lot of people still bought whole cd's because it had that one song from the radio on it.
You buy the CD because they had a charting single on radio, you’re than disappointed that the rest of the album is a different sound.
Not everyone had internet in the 90s-00s either mate…..
Then you keep listening to it anyways, and it slowly becomes one of your favourite albums of all time.
Chumba Wumba deep-cuts.
They do really grow on you
They get up again
We call that justifying your purchase. You forced yourself into liking it so you didn't "waste" the money.
Haha, definitely a possibility!
I think there's also an element of the hit tracks often being a bit more formulaic. There's a big component of familiarity in music that makes it appealing, so people might not appreciate the more experimental tracks on an album until they've heard them a few times.
Did you miss the whole “you could test listen to the CD in the shop” part?
Nope, not every place had the money to burn on a cd in a jukebox from every artist. Also standing there for 45 minutes to listen to the entire thing? Who actually does that?
Me. It was me. I was 14. I listened to the whole thing. I think the name of the store was "The Warehouse" and maybe another was called "Good Guys"? But yeah. Both. I'd take the bus to the mall and sit on that raggedy ass carpet that smelled like a movie theater floor and listened to the whole damn album. All of them actually (usually like 6-8 per station?) until the manager told me to leave. A couple times clerks would hook me up with burned demos.
But yeah. It was me.
I guess as an escape, was thinking purely consumerism. My bad.
You're not wrong, but there were definitely people who spent tons of time listening to music at the record store.
I guess, I was thinking of strictly purchasing. Yeah some people do just go and hang out and chill instead.
There were actual listening stations with headphones here in Germany at certain media chains. Some people spent whole afternoons in there.
But yeah, the opposite did exist. I remember, when I was a teenager friends got a dozen or more CDs for their birthday. Good old 1998.
Sugar Ray surprised many people by being a punk band that had a pop song or two.
I bought 3 Monster Magnet albums looking for Mean Machine
In the 2000s, some electronics stores where I lived had "jukeboxes" with headphones and a barcode scanner, so you could listen to 30-second snippets of the songs on an album before buying it.
I'm old enough to know the pencil trick to fix a cassette that got eaten by the stereo....
I still keep a pencil in my car. I know there's no cassette to play, but my car feels naked with a pencil rolling around the center console or in the little tray on the dash.
I also learned how to do this as a child but I am probably a bit younger than you at 18yo.
"Old or poor..."
It was less that we were poor and more that my parents had a lot of music and radio dramas on different media. My father still has more than two hundred vinyl disks that he plays semiregularly and I have an old audio tape player/recorder sitting around in my bedroom although I don't really use that one.
Just having a joke, glad to hear people committed to the old media
Only half of it, apparently! I just looked it up to check, and it turns out it launched on June 1 of that year.
God, I miss test listens. My favorite record store was very easy going in this, they'd happily let me stand there listening to most of the CD. The unspoken rule was that if you spend that much time listening, you're going to buy it anyway.
One of the few shops where I always felt welcome.
Kazaa, limewire. One - Metallica.mp3.exe as far as the eye can see.
That file was the best. I could have made a collection out of them xD
Format C:, Reinstall XP
In 1999? Uuuuh.
Never saw a music shop with a communal CD player that allowed you to remove the CD shrink wrap.