this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
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I remember that time and it was kind of awful. It was brutal in terms of packaging, and lugging around all those cds sucked. It was way more expensive and the money still all went to record companies, not to mention how terrible it felt to pay full price for a mostly garbage cd just for one song (singles existed though but not for everything).
Records companies also had final say on who we listened too and completely controlled the whole scene essentially.
I get the nostalgia but it was 100% worse both for artists and consumers. Well it has always been rough for artists tbh, I don't know if it's harder right now or not.
The contracts that steal music from artists haven't changed one iota. Unless you've got juice like Paul McCarty, Beyonce, or Taylor Swift, and even then it can be a fight that takes years.
I have a feeling it's easier to put your music out there as an independant artists. There's always someone taking a cut but the contacts are optional and there isn't much gate keeping like before.
It's like every other media industry. The monoculture is dying. Everyone's who's "about it" is into niche subcultures and micro-celebrities you'll probably never hear of.
There was a weird period of time from the mid-20th through the early 21st century where radio and TV had very strongly concentrated media production which made up most people's media consumption.
For the last 15 years or so the tools of professional-looking media production for mass consumption have been available to anyone with a few hundred bucks to spare.
In some ways it's a communist utopia. The means of production have been commodified so much virtually anyone can afford them. However capitalists have moved on from owning the means of production to owning the means of distribution (the platforms).