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thank you for providing links and reminding everyone what the world was like before streaming

Well, it really wasn't that bad. People were more selective about what they listened to but the average person probably spent about what they do today on streaming.

(Which also probably sets some ceiling on streaming prices and digital entertainment more broadly.)

I'm not sure selective is the right word, there were just far fewer choices. A typical record store would have O(thousands) of different titles, whereas spotify has over 100 million. Obviously much of that is trash, but it's still a huge difference.

It's also worth noting that a big contributor to the 90s spike was people replacing tapes/records with CDs, which were a far superior medium for most usage. The decline after 2000 was not streaming, since that didn't exist, but the wind-down of the upgrade cycle and the rise of file sharing and 0.99 digital track purchases in lieu of $15-20 album purchases.

I agree with most of that though I probably had access to better record stores than was the norm. And yeah digital purchases were never huge but a lot of that as you say was because people often bought single tracks. In fact if you did want an entire album it often made sense to purchase a CD and rip it.

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