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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.