Records are dead. Long live streaming!

People are forever waxing nostalgic over the “old days” of music. Through some twisted reasoning they long for the days of records, tapes, and CDs, complaining that today they have to pay a monthly subscription just to listen to music. Perhaps they don’t remember things the same way I do.

I bought a high-end stereo system in 1985. At the time, a record album cost about $6.00. For what is the equivalent of about $15.00 today, I got maybe 40 minutes of music. If I had a turntable and stereo. And I had to get up and flip the record after 20 minutes. Cassettes and CDs were available, too, and cost about the same. The CDs’ primary advantage was that I didn’t have to get up and flip the record (or tape).

Today, I pay $15.00 per month to Spotify, and Debra and I have access to a huge selection of music, podcasts, audio books, and who knows what all else. I can play whatever I want whenever I want. I turn it on and it plays. Continuously. Until I tell it to stop.

Let that sink in a little bit. For the monthly price of what I would have paid for one album, I have an essentially unlimited music library. And I’m not talking obscure stuff, but the latest music in any genre and pretty much everything of note that has been released since the dawn of recorded music. Sure, there are some things not available for various reasons, but Spotify and similar services do in a very real sense give you everything. For the price of one record album per month.

Not only that, but I don’t have to store the music collection, take special care of it, or replace a cassette tape because the temperamental player decided to have a snack. Warped records are a thing of the past.

To play those records or whatever back in 1985 required some special-purpose equipment. Very bulky, heavy, and expensive equipment. My high-end stereo system in 1985 cost what today would be about $12,000. And all it could do was play music: AM/FM stereo, vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs. The equipment weighed a couple hundred pounds and sucked power like nobody’s business. Sure, it was a really nice stereo, but even a low-end stereo back then would run you a few hundred dollars: what today would be $1,000 or more.

And if you bought one new record album every month then in 10 years you’d own maybe 120 hours of music. But if you then discovered Pink Floyd and wanted to collect all of their albums, it’d cost you $75.00 (equivalent to $180 today). Remember Apple Music and $1 per song?

Streaming, too, requires some equipment. You need a phone and an internet connection. Oh, wait, you already have those! All you need, if you want to save your ears, is a better speaker than what the phone includes. A pretty decent speaker for small spaces will run you maybe $30. Some quite usable wireless earbuds will be less than $100. You can spend a whole lot more if you want to, but a “listenable” speaker is not at all expensive. By contrast, even a set of low-end stereo speakers in 1985 cost hundreds of dollars: the equivalent of a thousand or more today.

So, let me see: a hugely expensive, non-portable stereo system combined with a laughably small music collection, or a $15.00 monthly subscription to a service that gives me immediate access to pretty much anything I’d ever want to listen to whenever I want it, wherever I am.

Tough choice. Let me think . . .

Who am I kidding? If you’re nostalgic for the bad old days of owning media, knock yourselves out. I’ve got some records, CDs, and cassettes (no 8-tracks left, sorry) I’ll make you a heck of a deal on. Me, I’ll sit back and groove to some tunes and laugh while watching you fiddle with your records or whatever.