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How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#131

Post by fx1994 »

taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

and tweaking 95 with nlite so it was blazing fast after stripping all useless stuff, great era

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#132

Post by anthk »

fx1994 wrote: post #131
taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

and tweaking 95 with nlite so it was blazing fast after stripping all useless stuff, great era

Windows 98 too with IE remover where you could decouple it from the shell andd use Win95's shell on top. Yeah, libre software solved it with ease today with Classic Shell and back in the day under any Unix/GNU/BSD with FVWM+RXvt against boated DE's or environments (maybe people won't know, but FVWM despite its features and look it was actually lighter than TWM) did the same surprise to me. Cycles mattered even under an Athlon, and as I loved emulation every non related cycle for MAME, PCSX and some new emulators was a waste on resources. Ditto for multimedia and games.

Oh, and sometimes MPlayer can still be faster than MPV with legacy machines. And the same happens with some Mplayer ports (or MPCHC which should borrow lots of code) against WMP or VLC itself.

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#133

Post by microtonal »

taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

Didn't they also pay Brian Emo to make the little startup jingle?

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-brian-eno-created-the-micro...

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/brian-eno-donates...

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#135

Post by leetrout »

taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

> made lots of coasters

Haha we would leave the room and avoid walking near the computer when the burner was running. Thanks for bringing back a memory :)

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#136

Post by stavros »

Krutonium wrote: post #129
stavros wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the fact that the UIs are less responsive and have worse UX now.

My UI is pretty responsive. Of course, I also don't run MacOS or Windows, so...

I guess you also don't run any Electron apps?

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#137

Post by breppp »

reddalo wrote: post #124
taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

I miss that kind of iteration. New OS releases actually meant new technology, better tools, a more refined UX. How did we end up in a world with Windows 11 and Liquid Glass? So sad.

> How did we end up in a world with Windows 11 and Liquid Glass? So sad.

Nostalgic memories of daily BSODs ensue

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#138

Post by magic_hamster »

taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

> experiencing those new technologies was unmatched

I think about this a lot and it feels like there's still massive advancements. Obviously AI is up there, but also smartphones, star link, autonomous (presumably) driving, noise canceling headphones, robotics.

I agree the 90s were way more exciting. The tech was moving fast but also the vibe was much more positive and optimistic. Today we might have massive breakthroughs in tech but we constantly feel like society is doomed and said tech might actually just destroy our jobs.

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#139

Post by wolvoleo »

taysco wrote: post #85

Microsoft went crazy with Windows 95 marketing and release. They also spent 3m (reported between 8m-15m at the time though -- which was massive for its day) on licensing Stones' Start Me Up.And they actually sent some shitty live version which would have avoided paying their old bassist. Jerks. The hype was real though. I can still remember installing the floppy version on one of my first PCs. The first start up was…

It was pretty groundbreaking tbh. Many of the UI paradigms are still used today. Windows 95 introduced the start menu and the task bar, windows 3.11 didn't have them in that form. The start menu was just an applications folder (a bit like on Mac) and the task bar was some shortcuts on what was basically the desktop. I don't think windows 3 had a registry either. It really became what we still know as windows today.

Of course the architecture sucked deeply with its dos based heritage but they fixed that soon after when NT 4 came out. And 2000 made that a stable experience.

I remember it was a pretty exciting time. I was studying computer science and we tried early beta builds ("Chicago") that had leaked.

Re: How did Windows 95 get permission to put Weezer video 'Buddy Holly' on the CD?

#140

Post by thomassmith65 »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #41
netsharc wrote: post #6

Decades later Apple put U2 on everyone's iPhone and people got mad... (/s, yeah the album was a gift on people's account, ready to download to the phone but not taking space otherwise, but I would've found it obnoxious too). This video was also on the CD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqL1BLzn3qc .. holy smokes, let's rewind time 30 years, where the presidential sex scandal was singular, consensual, and was actuall…

Nobody cared because nobody knew what an mp3 was in 1995. Most people - everyone but a minority of tech-minded audio producers - considered digital audio on a computer just a novelty. It took another four years until the public started to associate a music collection with the computer (ie: 1999, when Napster came out).

To flesh out my comment with more context...

  everyone [...] considered digital audio on a computer just a novelty
Personal computers, in 1995, did not have the juice to play high quality audio and video. Media formats used less efficient compression and harddisks were smaller (most couldn't fit a whole CD of PCM audio).

And, in 1995, there were no portable device options - as far as I know - to play audio files, on-the-go. For high-quality digital audio, it was pretty much either DAT cassettes, or CDs (recordable CDs were too new for normal people to own).

On the internet, a few sites, such as radio stations, streamed audio using 'realaudio'. The sound quality was abysmal.

At the same time, the tech industry was in the midst of a 'multimedia' bubble. 'Multimedia' essentially referred to programs on CD-ROMs that could play postage-stamp sized videos and short snippets, or low-quality snippets, of audio.

The music environment became closer to today's in 1999 - with Napster - when the public discovered mp3s, and closer still in 2001 - with Apple's introduction of the iPod - when the public discovered portable music players.

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