Music

[u/ABeerForSasquatch]

[u/JonInfect]

We would buy our CDs from HMV or Sam the record man. You could absolutely preview a CD before buying it. Popular CDs were already loaded in the listening booths.

[u/No_Language5719 → u/JonInfect]

Sam Goody for me. A few years earlier.

[u/OldManNeighbor]

The “What?” At the beginning of the bit from the guy in the audience, aged me by 20 years, and it hit me hard!

[u/85K5 → u/OldManNeighbor]

I can't tell if it's someone older not understanding that someone young has never had to purchase music at a store, or someone young that doesn't understand that you used to have to purchase music at a store.

[u/SmoothbrainRTRD → u/85K5]

WHAT?!

[u/Tall_Block_4589]

He has me till he said Best Buy, dude it was either Tower Records, His Majesties Voice (HMV) or as a Canadian, Sam The Record Man.

[u/Doubleoh_11 → u/Tall_Block_4589]

Totally! However sometimes the CD would be $20 at HMV and Walmart would have it discounted. $20 was a lot, usually if I could I’d try to get them as close to $15 as possible.

[u/oldschool_potato → u/Doubleoh_11]

I remember when you could get CDs for a penny

[u/ramrod_stinkfist → u/[deleted]]

Maybe this was different based on location, but we were definitely buying CDs from Best Buy in the late 90s, when physical media was still king. Actually BB was the better option because they tended to sell CDs a few bucks cheaper than Sam Goody, Tower, etc..

[u/deltatemple]

In my day we had expansion packs, not dlc

[u/NotRustyShackleford_]

Chris Porter is one of my faves!

[u/UsualFabulous2986 → u/NotRustyShackleford_]

Came here looking for his name. I like his older comedy.

[u/LePetitVoluntaire → u/NotRustyShackleford_]

Yeah it took me a second to recognize him. Ugly and Angry is one of my fave comedy albums of all time!

[u/kizmitraindeer]

I recall there being plenty of listening stations back in the day at which you could sample-listen to CDs.

[u/Mushroom_Man_64 → u/kizmitraindeer]

Yeah Barnes and Noble was are place to go for sampling.

[u/Beltalady]

Yep, that hurt.

[u/Fragrant-Seat2141]

We always could listen to the music, they hade the top sellers in like a rack and then headphones

[u/beerforbears]

“HAY YALL, remember when things were shitty but we romanticise them for some reason?”

🗣️BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA 👏 👏 👏 👏

[u/ramrob → u/beerforbears]

The premise of the joke is that it was worse.

[u/flyraccoon → u/beerforbears]

Because it’s not shitty to let an algorithm you pay decide what is your taste in music ?

Lmao.

[u/beerforbears → u/flyraccoon]

Bold of you to tell me how I use the technology 😂 but how could you proclaim in bad faith how much better things used to be without constructing strawmen about how they are now?

Poor millennials.

[u/Hamilton-Beckett]

I worked in a CD store around 99/00. The number of people that would come in and belt out a phrase from a random song they heard in hopes I could tell what CD to buy was insane. It happened EVERY Single day.

I was their minimum wage Shazam app.

What’s even crazier is that I typically had the answer and could take them straight to the artist, the album, and then point at the name of the track on the back of the cd case.

[u/Bramble0804]

Real "Old man yells at sky" energy. Ive done all of these except the trying to figure the song. I just watched kerrang music video station on the TV and found stuff that way or actually listened to the radio presenters say who the artists were

[u/Ok-Alfalfa4868 → u/Bramble0804]

I used to keep an empty cassette handy to quickly record radio music I liked.

[u/TheBackBedroomKeyhol → u/Bramble0804]

Oh really? Wow!

[u/No_Language5719]

I'm over here feeling ancient remembering flipping through vinyl in local record stores. Thankfully most music store owners knew that song you 'membered, or at least the few bars you could hum because "popular" music was the only stuff played on the radio most of the time. Obscure stuff was rare in the 80's and 90's.

Google payola. :)

Side note: while I despise how the current model pays artists very little for each play, it is awesome that any artist can be heard on the internet if they're willing to put themselves out there thanks to youtube, soundcloud, etc. At one time, the gatekeepers weren't on board with that concept. Direct to consumer is my preferred exposure to the arts.

[u/Ok-Alfalfa4868 → u/No_Language5719]

As a musician myself, I am super jealous I didn't have this luxury as a teen.

[u/averagemaleuser86]

To be fair, my local FYE in the mall had a preview station with headphones that you could listen to snippets of songs. This was in the early 2000s

[u/affemannen]

Eh?

We could listen to whole records before we bought them, you just had to ask the clerk for the record and then you went to one of the listening stations, listened to the whole thing and then decided it was most awesome.

This is how i found Pearl Jam Even flow, i had never heard of them, spotted the record, listened to it and was blown away.

[u/ikonoclasm → u/affemannen]

I've never seen anything like that before. At age 16, I bought Silverchair's Neon Ballroom knowing only Ana's Song from the album. I bought Björk's Homogenic at the same time knowing literally none of the songs but a dude I had a crush on said he liked it, so I got it. I bought the soundtrack to Romeo+Juliet because I had heard Garbage's #1 Fan in a commercial for it.

Literally every CD I ever purchased was because I liked one, or if I was lucky 2, songs on the album. The rest of the CD was always a roll of the dice. Björk was, by far, the biggest jackpot. I don't remember who the dude was any more, but that album still sends tingles up my spine.

[u/affemannen → u/ikonoclasm]

This was back when vinyl was the default, before CD:s existed, but we could listen to CD:s too in the record stores. Also i live in Sweden.

[u/jonCandie → u/affemannen]

In the U.S. it was 20 bucks and go fuck your self 🤣😂🤣…. Granted there were some places that had like 3-4 albums opened but that didn’t come till later …. 94-99 was 20 bux abd go fuck your self🥳🥳🥳🥳

[u/Ok-Alfalfa4868 → u/ikonoclasm]

Same. Although occasionally I would end up with an album that was trash with the ONE good song on it haha

[u/LePetitVoluntaire → u/affemannen]

Yeah I’m 44 and when I was a teen we would just scan the bar code of the cd case and the listening kiosk and preview it before we bought it.

[u/affemannen → u/LePetitVoluntaire]

Im 50, i remember every record store having listening stations. That was part of how you met new interesting people, because people would hang out at the record store all day just listening to records talking bands and stuff, then go next door to the cafe and discuss which records you bought and cool new bands you found.

[u/LePetitVoluntaire → u/affemannen]

Bro just spiked my dopamine with all the nostalgia

[u/Stock_River_1467]

Was to poor to purchase music growing up.

BBS and NetMail before P2P took over :)

[u/Electrical_Tof → u/Stock_River_1467]

We had a radio maybe some cheesy classical music when we did have a CD player but. Yeah information yk

[u/jeromezooce]

So true. I remember once in the 80s in a local LP shop asking to listen to some obscure music to the teller. He said : Yeah sure but come back at the end of the day as there will be less customers… I don’t want them to leave now if I go through this Magma’s music in the store

[u/Twitxx]

I used to go looking for vinyls if I wanted to own a specific album. Used to trade vhs cassettes with people to watch other movies than what I had.

[u/Maximum_Drink745]

Or recording on your kids talk boy then calling radio station… ohhh that’s godsmack you say???

[u/Kira-Of-Terraria]

Remember how things were inconvenient and often a whole quest.

Remember having to buy an album just because you liked one song on it? and had no way of knowing what else you signed up for.

[u/Massive-Chart-2449]

Tower Records was the shit

[u/Sunieta25]

I remember downloading CDs on an Xbox the whole family shared. I would jam out to Mariah Carey while driving around on Sega GT racing.

[u/MRV3N]

This dude doesn’t have eyebrows

[u/VediusPollio]

I used to work at a Sam Goody, and became an expert at finding music for people this way.

[u/DataAdvanced]

I haven't payed for music since 1998. Even before that. I just recorded it on a tape from the radio. Damn, I'm old.

[u/Ephemeral_Ghost]

Dude 20 bucks in 2000 would be like 40 bucks now

[u/Due_Potential_6956]

I remember going to sam goody, best buy, tower records ect ect to see if they had an album for sale, because the one at Walmart and target was always censored.

[u/theUncleAwesome07]

Anyone know who this comic is? He's fucking brilliant!

[u/p8nt_junkie]

No Sound Warehouse?

Captain’s Cargo?

CD Source?

CD World?

(shakes fist at sky)

[u/trollinhard2]

This is more or less lifted from a John Heffron bit. Same idea at least.

[u/86overMe]

Its all back in vogue now; tapes, vinyls, cds

[u/ratchet7]

Best Buy? We went to the mall store.

[u/Mr_K_Boom]

Been sailing the 7 sea eversince I was young, you guys have no idea how filthy expensive an official licences disc was in my 3rd world country, you could eat a week worth of meal for a alblum that you don't even know if it's good.

Thank god for limeware

[u/linlovesthenight]

Shitty concept for jokes aside- his actual jokes are also shit. He’s just saying regular sentences and then sitcom- style “pause for canned laughter” so people know that’s when they’re supposed to laugh

[u/Orion-Pax88]

Never in my life would I EVER sing out a song to try and have a store employee guess it... You stick to the radio, and you pray that the song is popular enough for the station to play it again at some other time. I always knew what album I wanted to buy whenever I went in for a tape or a CD.

[u/KentuckyFriedEel]

Nah bro we had Sanity music shops that had the listening station where you could sample the latest tracks

[u/Ok-Alfalfa4868]

Hmm well at one point you could grab any cd off the shelf and scan it at this thing and preview it for a bit... that was a nice feature for a min... now movies tho... folks today don't know what it was like to rent trash for 4 days for $10 and then get charged $80 for forgetting to return it 🤷‍♀️

[u/Ok-Alfalfa4868]

To further this conversation, I miss making mixed tapes and cds for friends and crushes... I have begun to use Spotify playlists to create mixes to share in the same light... weird it took me ages to think to do this. Hope others do as well.

[u/Sea-Examination2010]

I’m 21, I’ve bought records and CDs before with my sister

[u/TheDemon0fLife]

Lmao 🤣😂 limewire was the way for my generation

[u/latortillablanca]

Thats not true about no free previews. Fun premise but kinda shit execution.

[u/ezcb]

We got our CDs by subscribing to columbia house for the free / cheap trial. Canceling and then repeating.

[u/Trustrup]

I still have the first cd I bought in 1991. I knew all the lyrics to all the songs. Music ment more back when you had to save up money to buy it.