How many of you out there remember holding a microphone up to the speaker and recording the radio onto a cassette tape? I do.
In 1983, cassettes tapes accounted for 47.8% of music sales; vinyl 44.6%. The jump in casette sales was a result of the debut of the Sony Walkman in the early '80s. Although CDs overtook cassettes in 1991, their sales peaked barely a decade later in 2003. Downloads overtook CDs in 2012.
In 2013, CDs accounted for 30.4% of all music sales. Downloads, meanwhile, accounted for 40% (singles, 22.4%; albums, 17.6%) Sales of ringtones peaked at 11% in 2008.
iTunes was released in January 2001; the iTunes Store in April 2003. The first iPhone was released in 2007.
When it comes to tech, I feel I was born at just the right time.
When I was young, we were riding rockets to the moon, exploring space. When I was in high school, the first personal computers were just starting to debut. In my first year of high school, I was typing reports on a clunky manual typewriter. Later, I was using an electric one that had all kinds of new-fangled gadgets like a correction tape. By my first year in college, the Mac was released, changing everything.
I experienced a range of cellphones and digital devices, such as “pocket bells”, simple digital cameras and electronic dictionaries, electronic notebooks, etc. Then Steve Jobs did a presentation of the first iPhone and a tech revolution followed that even the eggheads at Apple couldn’t have predicted.
Armstrong and Aldrin got from earth to the moon with only 4K of computing power. I now carry 64GB in my back pocket. Kids today probably can't imagine what it was like before computers and smartphones.