Tuesday, August 20, 2013

I'm feeling my age today.

Before YouTube, there was a robust online trade in music video downloads on sites like Limewire and Scour.

You'd have to wait and wait and wait for the download to finish (songs were bad enough, but videos took forever), and then, when it was done, there was a real possibility that the file was messed up or incomplete or incorrectly labeled...

But oh, when you clicked on that file and there was a full-length (albeit low-resolution) video permanently yours - that you could watch whenever you wanted - God, that was the best.

Convenience, man.  I swear, sometimes I think it sucks all the fun out of everything.

7 comments:

  1. This post was inspired by all the Matchbox Twenty I've been listening to lately, instigated by a friend of mine recently seeing them in concert.

    Rob Thomas! That is man who could write his heart out! I most definitely downloaded the "Push" video from Scour circa 2001, and there it has remained on my hard drive ever since...

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  2. You can always download the videos from youtube if you want to...

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  3. I remember being faced with the harsh reality of a hard drive with a limited amount of space. Every few months, my sister and I would have to review our MP3 collection and purge songs that we didn't listen to frequently!

    I like to watch this YouTube video every few months: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qii34pPG8JM

    -jst

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    1. Okay, that commercial may have made me a little weepy this morning. Nineties nostalgia is the best! Forgive me for being cynical, but I just can't imagine anyone is going to look back on this decade (or the one before it) with as much wistful tenderness as we do for the years of our youth. *sigh*

      Purging MP3s because storage was actually limited! How quickly we forget that there was a time when we couldn't keep absolutely *everything*. Kids today. They'll forever be weaker for never having been forced to make the hard decisions that we were... :)

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  4. I remember recording music videos from MTV on VCR-tapes. Wow, I'm practically a living fossil.

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    1. Well, if you are, then I am too! :) Taping things from the VCR!! Those were REALLY the days... :D

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