This is during the era before Spotify existed: during the time CD’s were big along with the infancy of iTunes including the first iPods during the early 2000s (third party sites is where users uploaded mp3 files of songs, the full length available for free download) my cousins would often download entire albums.
The same crap generations before did with vinyls (with a wax mold, used to etch the soundtrack onto a wax copy but audio is shit) since buying an official copy from a record store isn’t cheap for some people. I’ve heard “torrented” songs from cassettes (via a tape recorder) when the radio played a song, press record.
Music stores in the 90s would sell CDs of the latest hits from known artists of the time, a friend would buy a copy then rip the hell out of it by “pirating” the entire album onto a blank CD-R. Pirates did the same with concerts of famous singers, placing a tape recorder on the side adjacent of where the singer would perform.
I have recorded songs off the radio onto cassette. I have made mix tapes. First off records, later CDs. There was a general trade going on at school among friends. Somebody would get a new album on tape or on CD and when the owner had listened to it enough times it would make the rounds so people could record it for themselves. Musical socialism.
I have made Minidisc mix tapes as well. I went as far as recording concerts from VHS onto Minidisc. Adding track names was harder than T9 texting and took fucking ages.
I ripped and burned CDs, some of them are still stashed away in an attic somewhere.
I don’t remember the infancy torrenting service that we used around the turn of the century. It wasn’t Napster. I also made mix tapes of downloaded songs onto CD. To play more easily because there weren’t any iPods yet but everyone had a stereo.
Now I stream the music I used to steal. Can’t feel great about it because I know the artists get next to nothing for it.
I miss having a good stereo. Now it’s crappy phone speakers or compressed Bluetooth shit.
Maybe limewire or sharebear?
Napster was hilarious because you would start a download of one song and another user would finish it with a different copy. Sometimes you would get a completely different song for the second portion.
I can’t remember. As you can tell from my lengthy historical summary, I’m old enough to use that as an excuse.