It's amazing how much the way music is "consumed" has changed. Most of us used to listen to the radio and watch MTV when GN'R released Appetite. We would get records from a store, record club or maybe a mail order catalogue. If you couldn't afford to buy a single, you'd tape it off the radio.
Fast forward to the early 2000s. Now you could download any track you wanted and get a digital copy of it for free. No more taping off the radio or borrowing your friend's CD/LP to copy that. Until people started buying tracks for $0.99 on iTunes.
And now. Streaming and songs catered to the Tik Tok crowd where songs are basically made to fit in a video clip posted on social media....
If you look at the people who buy tickets to go see GN'R. I wonder how many of them actually buys physical records. Of any artist.
/jarmo