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People listened to records, cassette tapes and CDs
Recording formats often get mentioned, but they are not the important music thing of which kids today are often unaware. The important thing is that we used to have record collections (which were mostly composed of CDs by the time I was old enough to have a modest one.)
I now have a more extensive one and enjoy it greatly, only now it's in mp3 form.
Oh to prepare a mixtape on a dual cassette player... Now that I migrated as well to a digital mp3 library it would be dead easy to make playlists, but somehow the convenience kills the fun out of it.
Timing to hit the pause button (to unpause) in order to start a recording JUST as the DJ stops talking and the song kicks in...
I wish. The DJ would always talk over the start of the songs, and then start jabbering again before it ended.
Now I’m wondering if part of why DJs talked over songs was specifically so we COULDN’T get clean recordings on cassette…
Get free DJ software and do crossfades. You couldn't do that with dual cassette players.
I didn't like the music on commercial radio so I would listen to community radio which would either forget to back announce or would play such long brackets that I would lose count so I would call the DJ to ask about that special song. Then to buy the song...
I had to catch a train from the suburbs into a city import record store. Often they would not have what I wanted so I would put down a deposit for a vinyl record which would be ordered from overseas then I would return a week or two later to pick it up.
It was expensive so whenever a friend had a birthday I would buy a record we mutually wanted but make a cassette copy for myself first.
For the first listen-through I would set aside an hour, undisturbed, liner notes in hand, getting up half way to turn the album over.
Am still into obscure music so...
Now I pirate-download music to play on a net radio station I run with overseas friends where we also play ambient electronic music we make over the Internet with laptops.
I would rather get together to jam with musicians in real life but now that technology lets musicians make music on their own they don't bother collaborating, and besides, too few local people my age have time to get together in person to make music just for fun.
That's why I advocate against Spotify. At least as a sole way to listen to music (it's maybe good at finding new stuff).
CDs are still king with me. 1,957 and still counting. I feel cheated if I don't get to enjoy that romance of flipping through the liner notes while listening to the CD that first time. I rip the songs I like after a few days of listening to it. I suspect the day will come when MP3's will not be free.
DVD's too. Almost 1,400 of them as well.
I did have to let the cassette tapes go. I kept some of the rarer ones, but they weren't meant to last 40 years and would not likely survive another rewind.
I rip all my CDs to FLAC so I can listen to them easily while working or driving or walking or otherwise where having headphones and a phone is easy but carrying a book of burned backups and a CD Walkman would be hard.
But I also have a humble collection of vinyl because I actually really like the ritual of placing the stylus and listening and turning the record over when I want to just… hear the music and enjoy it for itself.
Best part of pre internet was a friend would call saying the got the latest obscure album and we would all rush to their place for a listening party. While something like spotify, etc makes access easier the music culture suffers
I might even suggest that having an mp3 or other file-based record collection is still in the same vein.
The big departure, imo, is people who don't own their music collections. They rely only on Spotify or Apple or Amazon or whatever and just stream.
One day, when their contracts with the labels or whatever expire, or the service is discontinued, or you move to another country... your collection evaporates. It's happened before.
Also worth noting that records are sort of at risk - waning are the days when you'd listen to a record front to back "as intended", and singles are increasingly popular - no doubt due to YouTube.
Interestingly and perhaps relatedly, even the musical techniques are changing.
Either side isn't good or bad, but the change is interesting to observe.