Hello to the handsome guy or the pretty girl on the other side of the screen! In this issue, I will be covering things I enjoy most about the 2000s. I am no journalist and have very little experience writing articles, apologies to the sophisticated XD. The topic of this issue will be music, just so that we can catch the vibe of the early and mid 00s. Buckle up because we're about to go back in time.
Fuck. Spotify wasn't around in the 00s. How do I listen to music?
Well, you've got plenty of options. And don't cuss, we're doing cultural education here.
Portable CD players were overwhelmingly popular in the 00s, as CDs made up 90% of the music market. Then they faced competition from MP3 players and the revolutionary iPod and slowly began losing their share of the market. Well, while it is a sad story indeed, you just can't deny how stylish they look.
The revolutionary, the badass, the whatever-else iPod. It was mind-blowing. Suddenly, you can carry thousands of songs with you and !!! have a shuffle option. Almost everyone got an iPod, just like later everyone got an iPhone, just like later everyone got...
But how did people download music? Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing application, was launched in 1999. It was a music-fan utopia that made music free to everyone with an internet connection. Later in 2003, the launch of iTunes Music Store was a game changer. Apple made purchase of music simpler than piracy and by 2008, became the largest music retailer both in the US and UK.
And what about MTV? Wasn't it prime before?
Oh, worry not, little guy, it was.
MTV was used for artist promotion. In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, MTV stopped being a reliable source of music. There are a few reasons for that. Firstly, the music industry started to lose revenue due to digital piracy, so they stopped spending money on MTV promotions. MTV shifted its focus from music videos to reality shows. Secondly, the rise of YouTube has only weakened MTV's monopoly in the music video industry. YouTube's debut made MVs easily accessible. Before VEVO, YouTube and Dailymotion (sometimes MySpace) were the main places where people would share music.
I genuinely think that you should try to watch the Sims 2 music videos on YouTube because it's just so funny to me.
Boooring. I wanna go clubbing.
Okay, let's go clubbing. It's the early 00s, indoor smoking was still common, doing a lap was crucial before actually entering the club. People would strut around the entire club to see who was out, check out outfits, maybe even spot their ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. As for gay clubs, you would hardly spot at least one man in a gay bar who had a beard, it was considered trashy. Even though gay bars were meant to be a safe place, half of the party were bachelorettes, straight women and their boyfriends. We'll talk about club fashion and fashion of 2000s in general in next issues. So, to the music.
Having a DJs was a standard for almost every club in the 00s. Club music was a mix of electro house, hip-hop, R&B and dance-pop. Some of the notable club bangers you've probably heard include:
"Licky" by Larry Tee and Princess Superstar,
"SexyBack" by Justin Timberlake,
"Pokerface" by Lady Gaga,
"My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas.
Having a DJs was a standard for almost every club in the 00s. Club music was a mix of electro house, hip-hop, R&B and dance-pop. Some of the notable club bangers you've probably heard include: "Licky" by Larry Tee and Princess Superstar, "SexyBack" by Justin Timberlake (which was a massive club anthem in the mid-to-late 2000s), "Pokerface" by Lady Gaga, "My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas. Iconic artists of the 2000s were dominated by Eminem, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Kanye West, and Rihanna.
You can check out more 2000s bangers here.
I hope I could help you have a deeper understanding of what was music like in the 00s, it was a journey for me too, because of enormous amounts of info i had to dig through.
