Telling Lies: Bowie and Online Music Distribution in 1996

Post by Slow_Hand » Wed, May 07, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

lowercased wrote: post #16

burningChrome wrote: post #6

Still remember working for a wireless company fixing phones as a repair tech. One of our steady clients was Prince's studio Flyte Time. Terry Lewis would often come in and I'd loved talking to him about music. One evening before I was closing up, he dropped in with Prince's phone that needed a fast repair. I finally asked him what the deal with Prince and his music was. The Warner Brothers kerfuffle, and all the dram…

I seem to recall Lennon's "Instant Karma" phase, where he wanted to just get stuff out . Had a song idea, recorded, mixed, shipped out to pressing and was for sale in stores within 10 days. I suspect a lot of artists over the years have just itched to get something out today , but yeah... without the tech, it was just impossible.

Post by sys_64738 » Wed, May 07, 2025, 9:52 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #4

1999 was probably the year that online distribution really took off with Napster catching the labels unprepared (Apple’s iTunes Music Store did a lot to prove to the labels that people would actually pay for music downloads, although it would be years before legal DRM-free downloads became a reality). I had a handful of downloaded music files that I acquired in 1998–9, but I rarely listened to them because other than…

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Wed, May 07, 2025, 9:57 PM UTC

bdcravens wrote: post #25

In 1997 or 1998, I had a 486, and to play an MP3 (which of course took hours to download), I'd have to exit out of Windows into DOS and do literally NOTHING else but play the command line mp3 playback app I found.

Post by dhosek » Wed, May 07, 2025, 10:06 PM UTC

Sleaker wrote: post #30

dhosek wrote: post #4

1999 was probably the year that online distribution really took off with Napster catching the labels unprepared (Apple’s iTunes Music Store did a lot to prove to the labels that people would actually pay for music downloads, although it would be years before legal DRM-free downloads became a reality). I had a handful of downloaded music files that I acquired in 1998–9, but I rarely listened to them because other than…

Aux out of pc into your home audio system did the trick. CDs were getting soooo cheap back then you could just burn mixes and cd players started to put in direct mp3 compatibility around then. I grew up a geek though, so this probably just came easier to me back then, but the high quality options haven't changed much in the last 20 years as far as audio is concerned. Just the proliferation of SoC devices has eased th…

Post by Sleaker » Wed, May 07, 2025, 10:20 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #47

Sleaker wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aux out of pc into your home audio system did the trick. CDs were getting soooo cheap back then you could just burn mixes and cd players started to put in direct mp3 compatibility around then. I grew up a geek though, so this probably just came easier to me back then, but the high quality options haven't changed much in the last 20 years as far as audio is concerned. Just the proliferation of SoC devices has eased th…

The thing is that the PC and the stereo were often in different rooms. That was the case for me where my stereo system was in the living room and the computer was in the second bedroom of my apartment. Remember that home networking, wifi and “spare” computers were also not really a thing in 1999 or before either.