Zoomer here, how did people find their music back in the 90s and early 2000s? Before file sharing software, youtube, forums. No way you had to go to a physical music store, that sounds cringe fr fr, how did you filter through all the garbage and found the good stuff?
you would buy music magazines, watch MTV, listen to the radio, word of mouth between friends, it was much harder to be a cool hipster who knew obscure bands back then so the more you knew the more impressive it would be and more cool you would be
>>130079170the scene. word of mouth. just like vydia gaems.people told you this was good so you played it and then these games had myths surrounding them like >it has subliminal messages manor>go here and you get a secret pokemonetc, etc. there was less content back then so the content that was out there got mythologized more.
There were record stores. Some were fantastic.College radio always had some great shows that would play new things. There were a lot more bands doing shows on little clubs. They would play and sell their music.
zines were a thing back then for genres and sub cultures. I knew a kid in Montana back in the early 90s who had a death metal zine that had a decent distribution across the US. He ended up being a bass player for a somewhat popular band. It was tougher to find stuff back then, but people were far more serious and passionate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine
>>130079170My friend had certain labels he would follow and listen to their samplers/free preview mp3s on their early websites and find bands that way. First punk labels and then Skin Graft, Relapse, and other noise/experimental labels. I imagine that's what most of the die hard music nerds did. I didn't really get into music until high school, I would look online for bands and read magazines. Music review books also used to be a thing. The Trouser Press Record Guide was my bible
We had a music dude in our class, he copied cassettes and traded them, mostly rock stuff. Got into Faith no More via him. He tried to get me into temple of the dog but i though they sucked. Cool dude.
>>130079170by stories told from your elders. they would turn on a radio and turn the knob, and you would hear a song. sometimes you would sing along. could happen at home or in the car
>>130079170radio, word-of-mouth, and local magazines
I found laurie anderson bc they played oh superman on MTV exactly @ 00am a random tuesday, in between normal rotation. I found it so alien i tripped balls.
Then when the internet was made massive and forums were invented, i recall being on the ipecac forum, and we got a particular troll that shitted on every patton project the whole day. So discussions were hot, and one day a maddened fella told him to at leaast drop a list of shit he found good, and in that list was US Maple, which im a hard fan of to this day.
>>130079170>No way you had to go to a physical music store, that sounds cringe fr frYeah. The most famous in my area was Bill's Records which was an indie shop that was a complete jungle owned by a sickly, chain-smoking Jewish proprieter (he'd smoke in the store and literally died inna store, a customer found him slumped over). I bought a Front 242 CD from him:https://youtu.be/I1AOKNqNce4>how did you filter through all the garbage and found the good stuff?Well look at your pic. A lot of places would let you listen to the stuff before buying but it wasn't very efficient.Napster launched in 1999 but I never used that, but Something Awful had a music subforum where goons hosted their own FTP servers to share .mp3s. That was a way to get more obscure music like metal and industrial that wasn't played on the radio. Also friends. I learned about Rammstein because a friend in middle school had a CD copy of Sehnsucht, but they started becoming famous in the U.S. because they got on a big nu-metal tour.>>130079761>Got into Faith no More via him.I actually learned about Tomahawk before Faith No More because I saw them open for Tool in the early 2000s in Fort Worth. The crowd hated them and Patton yelled insults about how the audience were a bunch of cousin-fucking rednecks but I thought it was hilarious.
I listened to the radio. I watched music videos on TV. Dish Network had these channels that just played music without video so I would tune into those too. Big beat was big at the time but electronic music exposure in the US was limited so I would take it any way I could get it. I saw the videos for Stardust's Music Sounds Better With You and Cassius 1999 on M2 so I was aware of french touch. I heard Daft Punk's Around The World at 5am on this syndicated radio show called All Night Cafe because I had to get up that early to go to school. Someone had requested it. So imagine a world where mainstream music is everywhere but you need to pay close attention to hear something else, even if it's basically mainstream in other parts of the world. Now everything is synchronized.
