In the early 1990's a company I was working for offered me a departing colleague's company car. There were tax advantages to company cars then, and it was a 2.0-litre Vauxhall Cavalier with automatic transmission: a world away from the bangers I had driven previously. I said yes please, and learned how to drive an automatic on the way back from the office in Docklands. (Forget about your left foot, is the secret.)
I realised then that there were some things that I would never spend my own money on, but would happily accept if it landed in my lap without too many costs.
And not just costs. Image matters. I have streamed Nine Feet Underground from Caravan's 1971 album In The Land of Grey and Pink a few times now. It's a great piece of music. There is no way I am buying the CD. Because of the songs on the rest of it. I am not Caravan-songs-guy: I'm great-instrumentals-guy. No CD with a twee pink cover will ever be in my collection. (This doesn't have to make sense to you, just to me.)
When cassettes appeared, it became clear that there was music we would buy, first- or second-hand. We wanted the LP. Then there was music we taped from other people's LP's. We wanted to have it available, but not so much that we would pay for it. Other than the cost of the cassette.
Home taping was killing music, we were told. We knew there were some spivs out there taping everything, as there were when downloading appeared. But that wasn't us.
What was it about tape-but-not-buy music?
Sometimes the LP only had a couple of decent tracks on it. In the 1970's the good stuff was amazing, but the bad stuff was dire. Now most CDs are all decent, or all dire, depending on whether you like that kind of music. A lot of 1970's LPs were not worth full retail.
Sometimes I liked the music, but I might go off it. U2's 1983 War, 1984 Unforgettable Fire and 1987 The Joshua Tree were like that. I bought their 1991 Achtung Baby (on cassette), and still have it. I play that much more frequently than I play the earlier albums, even now though I get the awesomeness of the earlier work.
Perhaps because it isn't music that I would want to put on as the result of a lapse of attention. Damn! I put on Unforgettable Fire. Or have someone put it on and then I would have to be polite and listen to it.
There are also artists and music that we pay full price for because a new album from them is an event, it has excitement and charge. That's why there's a new-release premium over the twelve-months-after-release price. There are artists we will pay twelve-months-after-release price. There are artists we would only ever stream, there are artists we would only ever stream once, and I will never knowingly play anything by Metallica.
This discussion makes no sense to full-time streamers, who pay a monthly price, or have Android software to dodge the ads, for everything, and can hear a new release on the day if the artist makes it available. Their equivalent is music they have on their Favourites, and music they don't, but still listen to. Same thing, lower price.
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