November 2, 2024,
You know what, there actually was the good old days. Even sometimes where there shouldn’t be, depending upon the product category.
That is why they are no longer here, but maybe you sure wish that they were.
How many times in the past, have you enjoyed a product, immensely, thought it would never end, and to your disappointment and surprise, it does.
Forever.
We’ve sure been there.
At the time, the good old days, the product was so much fun, enjoy it while it lasts.
Ready?
Let’s walk down memory lane.
Vinyl albums.
For those of us around in the 1960s and 70’s, vinyl albums were more than music. It was a connection to the artist. Yes, you loved the major chart topping single that brought you there, but if you listened to the rest of the album, there were some great songs, which the public really had not caught on to and you could turn them on to it (beautiful girls) and they would be a fan and think you were cool.
The other aspect to it was, even though one of the songs was not heavily marketed yet, it eventually would be. It was as though you were in on a secret. Prophetic even.
Then there was Tower Records.
In 1960, Russell Solomon opened the first Tower Records store on Broadway, in Sacramento, California.
He named it after his father’s drugstore, which shared a building and name with the Tower Theatre, where Solomon first started selling records.
The first stand-alone Tower Records store was located at 2514 Watt Ave in the Arden Arcade area of Sacramento. By 1976, Solomon had opened Tower Books, Posters, and Plants at 1600 Broadway, next door to another Sacramento Tower Records location.
What was cool about it was that “Tower”, as so many of us called it, was a great place to hang out.
Arguably the most famous Tower Records outlet was the purpose-built building that company staff general-contracted, with many personally contributing their labor, which opened in 1971 on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard and Horn Avenue in West Hollywood.
Once the online world became a force, vinyl, as most of us knew it, was a thing of the past. In terms of mass production, the vinyl good old days were gone.
Having said that, if you had teenagers, who knew the online world like the back of their hand, reassured us, there was a platform called Napster that will give you all of the music you want.
Napster was an American peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution.
Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999.
As the software became popular, the company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement. Napster ceased operations in 2001 after losing multiple lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.
Boy, for many, it was great while it lasted.
If you wanted to take a break from music, just a small one, there was always the movies.
We have a friend in our circle, who, back in the good old days, when she went on vacation, about 25 days of her month long vacation, she would go for a walk in her tree lined neighborhood and walk to Blockbuster where she would rent movies. She loved it so much, she would pay for a monthly movie pass for about thirty dollars and the idea during the month was to rent least 60 movies so her cost per film came in at 50 cents.
She loved it. The walk, the sunny days and curling up for a movie.
Blockbuster is a video rental store and former American multimedia brand.
The business was founded by David Cook in 1985 as a single home video rental shop, but later became a public store chain featuring video game rentals, DVD-by-mail, streaming, video on demand, and cinema theater.
They were hot with customers like our associate. The company expanded internationally throughout the 1990s. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster employed 84,300 people worldwide and operated 9,094 stores.
Very impressive. The good old days. She never thought it would end. But it did.
Questioned leadership and the impact of the Great Recession were major factors leading to Blockbuster’s decline, as was the growing competition from Netflix‘s mail-order service, video on demand, and Redbox automated kiosks.
Significant loss of revenue occurred during the late 2000s, and the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010.
The next year, its remaining 1,700 stores were bought by satellite television provider Dish Network, and by 2014, the last 300 company-owned stores were closed.
Look, if you can’t curl up on the couch, why not go to the movies. Especially if you become a member of MoviePass.
MoviePass, Inc. is an American subscription-based movie ticketing service owned by co-founder Stacy Spikes.
The service was launched in 2011 and allowed subscribers to purchase up to a movie ticket a day for a monthly fee.
The service utilized a mobile app, where users check in to a theater and choose a movie and show time, which resulted in the cost of the ticket being loaded to a prepaid debit card, which was used to purchase the ticket from the movie theater.
Sounds great, right?
And it was really great.
In 2017, the service was acquired by Helios and Matheson Analytics and the subscription cost was significantly lowered to $9.95 per month.
Could they survive at that low price point?
Membership ballooned to over three million subscribers by June 2018, but the service began to suffer from financial issues, which ultimately caused the service to shut down in September of 2019.
On January 28, 2020, MoviePass’ parent company HMNY filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and announced that it had ceased all business operations.
One more thing.
On November 10, 2021, MoviePass co-founder Stacy Spikes was approved ownership of the company by a New York bankruptcy court judge. Mr. Spikes, who was fired from the company in 2018, shortly after it was acquired by HMNY, announced a relaunch of the service in 2022.
There are lessons to be learned from this.
Life is about the moment. Especially if you are not the one in control of the product that you love. When they have their day, enjoy it. It is the good old days in real time.
Enjoy it now. Because as we have shown here?
It won’t last forever.
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OPENING PHOTO Pexels.com-Pavel-Danilyuk-photo-credit Femcompetitor.com, grapplingstars.com, fciwomenswrestling.com, fcielitecompetitor.com, fciwomenswrestling2,com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_Records
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(retailer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoviePass
https://www.fciwomenswrestling2.com
https://www.fcielitecompetitor.com/
https://fciwomenswrestling.com/