Media then and now.

Buying music used to be a very different experience, as did consuming all sorts of media. The saturation is crazy now. I am obsessed with stand-up comedy, and Netflix drops way too much comedy for me to handle lately.

Not to mention YouTube, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, and other platforms where stand-up specials are aired. Obviously, because of technology, the barrier to entry and production costs have plummeted. This means that lots of artists are able to consume more media and produce it, of course.

Back in the day, there were one or two comedy specials a year. It was a very special event; you didn’t know it was going to happen, there was no information or podcasts telling you it was going to happen soon.

CDs offered an entirely different experience. You’d have to go to the store on a particular day when an album was released. The artists would know that you were going to listen to the whole album start to finish. There was album artwork in the form of little pamphlets tucked into the CD jewel case. There was artwork, and often times, all the lyrics to a few of the songs were written down.

Now you hear a song, and you’re like, “Oh, I hated that song, but now I’m interested in listening because it was engineered to chemically please me in a lab.” So I Shazam it and then forget about it and never listen to it again or think about it again.

What a difference. Albums used to be a sacred experience, and they still can be in digital form, of course; I’m not trying to say they can’t be.

However, there was something precious about a landscape that was less saturated. Things carried greater weight and were consumed differently. Now we are all watching dopamine hits of quick videos fed to us by algorithms.

Anyways, I think there are really cool things about both eras. I’m glad I get to watch so much comedy and have so many amazing pieces of media to consume.

I also love that my aspiration of having a comedy special doesn’t require me to have the best one of three comedy specials of the year. Good times on both ends. This is the first CD I bought and its booklet.

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