Album Sales Continue to Plummet

1995--I worked my ass off at my Aunt's to save and finally earn my first Sony Discman. It was an inch and a half thick, matte black, and had to be parallel to the ground to work. Batteries lasted two discs. One scratch and no music. But it was loud and clean. I went to sleep with it often and it followed me everywhere.

And it had MEGA BASS®.

The first record I had on CD was Sepultura's 'Chaos A.D.' at the tail end of 1993. I still have it, so, I think it must be some sort of sign, collector for life!

The first CD I had was a gift from one of my sisters - The Wayne's World 2 soundtrack. It sucks, but my sister thought I would like it. I still own it.

My first CD was World Party's Goodbye Jumbo, a great album. It was given to me. My first purchase was Richard Marx's debut. I wasn't allowed to buy metal yet.

When I was younger, before I had my first MP3 player, I actually carried around a portable CD player and walkman in my pocket, with a CD wallet by my side. This was out in public shopping with my parents, too. I'd have Ratt or INXS in my walkman and The Replacements or Star Star on CD.

I started with CDs. Youthanasia, Black Album, Fear of the Dark. Can't remember the year, but maybe 94? Junior high anyway.

I wasn't exclusively into metal though. I bought Genesis, REM, U2 and whatever was popular, until I realised I don't like this stuff, I like this other stuff more. Helped majorly by the late 90's European traditional and power metal scenes that exploded around that time.

As a side note, I'm really not sure about music being sold on 3.5" diskettes. Yep, some people are pimping this format as a possible saviour.

My first CD was Mother Love Bone's Apple because I could not find it on vinyl

I think Stryper's To Hell With The Devil was my first CD

The first LP I picked out on my own was either the debut Boston album...or Kiss Rock 'N' Roll Over, I just can't remember which one I got first. Both in 1976.

The first CDs I bought were Metallica - The $9.98 EP and the Kill 'Em All CD with Am I Evil and Blitzkrieg as the bonus tracks circa 1988.

Dr8breed74 wrote:

As a side note, I'm really not sure about music being sold on  3.5" diskettes.  Yep, some people are pimping this format as a possible saviour.

Well, it could be a good compromise for people that like to own an actual physical copy. The diskette would be a good space saver for collectors.

Dr8breed74 wrote:

As a side note, I'm really not sure about music being sold on  3.5" diskettes.  Yep, some people are pimping this format as a possible saviour.

...Wait... How in the hell does that work? Aren't 3.5" discs something like 1.4mb or something like that in capacity? Are they throwing morse code on there?

As for early CDs, they were becoming the main thing as I hit my teens and my Dad was big on getting the biggest and best thing, so I was frequently getting hand-me-downs from him as he upgraded his collection.

My first CDs were either those "inherited" titles or gifts and I seem to recall the library was rather humble:

-Pearl Jam: Ten
-Faith No More: The Real Thing
-Faith No More: Angel Dust
-Pink Floyd: Animals

There may have been others, but for the longest time, those and a handful of mix tapes I made from my parents' collection were MY collection in full. The first two CDs I bought with my own money were at an Encore Books if memory serves and were "Disciplined Breakdown" by Collective Soul (still love that one as a GREAT example of a solid 90s guitar record) and "Reload" by Metallica. Good times.

Fat Freddy wrote:

Quote :

I remember feeling FORCED to buy a CD player because LPs started drying up, kind of funny that almost 25 years later LPs are still around.

My brother and I were late adopters to the CD as well, we didn't get our first CD player till late '92 if memory serves. We'd been buying cassettes for most of the 80s and were reluctant to change, but every time we went to Tower Records we noticed that they were devoting more and more floor space to CDs while the cassette selection was getting smaller and smaller, so the writing was on the wall.

I was probably around that same time frame, '92 or '93. I know I was still living at home.

I remember going to Silo Electronics and buying a Sony cd component player that I could plug into my current system, then going right to Tower Records and buying my first 3 cds ever that night. GnR's Appetite, Ozzy's Blizzard of Oz and Aerosmith's Toys in the Attic.

Toys got upgraded when I purchased Aerosmith's Box of Fire box set a few years later, but I still have the other 2 originals.

My '96 Thunderbird was the first new car I purchased and the first with a cd player. It actually had both, a tape and a cd player.

Hah. If you want to get into car audio, my first two cars only had tape decks when I was phasing really heavily into CDs. I bought this Philips discman that was built like a tank (this would have been around 2000) and wouldn't skip if you crashed the car and had that plugged into the cigarette lighter and a cassette adapter. It was a beautiful setup and it had this "resume" feature where it either continued where the song stopped if power was interrupted or just if playback was stopped. It was the most wonderful, jury-rigged solution going.

I didn't have a CD player in my car till my '99 Jeep Cherokee. Till then, whenever I bought a new CD I had to make a cassette copy for automotive listening. I hate to think how much money I pissed away on blank cassettes in those days, haha.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I didn't have a CD player in my car till my '99 Jeep Cherokee. Till then, whenever I bought a new CD I had to make a cassette copy for automotive listening. I hate to think how much money I pissed away on blank cassettes in those days, haha.

I remember being so jazzed that my new car had both cd and tape (both o' BOTH WORLDS!!), but in reality, by '96, I already had a decent enough collection of cds that the tape player rarely got used. When it did, it was mostly for mix tapes that I'd make for long road trips. Or a long lost cassette that would get played once, reminding me that I needed to get it on cd.

When I traded the T-Bird in for a Mustang in 2002(?), it was cd only. I'm sure I was phasing out tapes by that point anyway.

My first LP was Ozzy - Diary of a Madman & Blizzard of Oz. bought them used from a friend who was converting his collection to tape since he just got a boom box. I somehow acquired Kiss - Hotter than Hell around the same time. My first tape purchase was Rush - Moving Pictures. My first CD was U2 - Achtung Baby along with a CD Walkman.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I didn't have a CD player in my car till my '99 Jeep Cherokee. Till then, whenever I bought a new CD I had to make a cassette copy for automotive listening. I hate to think how much money I pissed away on blank cassettes in those days, haha.

Ha, me too. I think I used to buy a Sony brand called "CD-It" or something like that. Cassettes made for dubbing CD's.

corplhicks wrote:

And it had MEGA BASS.

All other kinds of bass seemed pointless once you had experienced MEGA BASS®

It was rubbish!

Boris2008 wrote:

corplhicks wrote:

And it had MEGA BASS.

All other kinds of bass seemed pointless once you had experienced MEGA BASS®

It was rubbish!

For how loud I'm going to speculate ALL of us were cranking our cans when doing portable listening, it's amazing we can still hear anything.

Maybe MEGA BASS was some magic ear massager that kept us from going deaf.

Huh?

...Wait, you don't remember MEGA BASS? Sony had a total chub for it and put it on every portable piece of gear they put out in the 90s. Hell, they probably STILL have it on all their portable gear.

I miss Mega Bass being sold as a idea. I live in south Wales, UK. The way the word 'mega' is pronounced is quite funny. It's so renowned for the way it's said, we even have a 'Mega Day'. Alas, it's not dedicated to the Sony idea of MEGA BASS - just a load of bands playing to a field of drunk people. MEGA!

I can imagine the Sony MEGA BASS festival. The only PA consists of subwoofers and it causes tsunamis a continent away.

Mega BASS sounds like a SyFy movie...