Now that we've all gotten used to on demand access to our favorite music, it's hard to recall just how miserable it was sometimes to be a music fan before digital. Let's reminisce on just how much time and money we wasted hunting down our favorite tracks back in the day.
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1) WAITING HOURS TO HEAR YOUR FAVORITE SONG ON THE RADIO
Was there anything worse than parking yourself in front of the radio for hours while waiting to hear your fave just ONCE? Usually so you could record the song onto a carefully curated cassette mix. Bonus points if the DJ didn't talk over the intro.
2) SPENDING ALL YOUR MONEY ON CD'S
Tower Records (and to a lesser extent Sam Goody) took the lion's share of my childhood allowance.
3) THE PAIN OF TRUE GEOGRAPHIC SEGREGATION
Britney Spears' Born To Make You Happy music video was released only outside the US (while we got the relative snoozefest From The Bottom of My Broken Heart). The closest US Britney stans came to being able to experience the Born music video was a 30 second teaser inserted on one of her other CD singles. I'm still bitter.
4) THE DEATH OF THE CD SINGLE
While the CD single remained popular worldwide until the early 2000s, they were largely phased out in the US starting in the 90s. This led to countless dollars wasted on whole albums just to get the single.
5) SEARCHING IN VAIN FOR THE "VIDEO VERSION"
Artists just loved remixing their videos for MTV/BET/VH1, but very rarely were these edits made available for purchase. Most of Xtina's first singles had album edits, radio edits, AND video edits! FML
6) GETTING DUPED BY COLUMBIA HOUSE
34 CDs for a penny was just too tempting.
7) THE LISTENING STATION AT THE MUSIC STORE
Nothing more awkward than jamming out to a new CD when there's a bank queue behind you waiting to do the same thing.
ONTD, what are your favorite memories of this bygone era and what music did you go crazy to track down?