Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I was a member of one of those generations. Sure, we recorded songs off the radio, or copied tapes of friends' tapes (well, actually I never did, but I could've). However, we also bought albums, for 2 reasons: Because our friends didn't always have the stuff we liked, or we found something they would like and bought it first; and most importantly, because tapes of tapes, and radio recordings, weren't as good in quality as the albums.
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I think one of the keys here is scale. Because copying an album back then depended on actually knowing someone in real life that had it, there was a better chance you would end up having to buy it if you wanted a decent copy. With the Internet it's pretty much a guarantee that you will be able to find a fairly high-quality copy somewhere for free. Yes, back then people did copy but it was a much smaller scale which I think is why the record companies didn't make such a big deal about it. Most people had a mixture of stuff they'd bought and stuff they'd taped from a friend. Until CDs, the copies we're typically pretty bad so if it was an album you REALLY cared about, you bought it. Amongst my friends, the cassette tape was for mixes or for listening to an album to see if you liked it enough to buy it. Now I know people who have huge collections of music and didn't pay for a single song. The younger they are, the more likely that is to be true.