You know what else it was? Nothing was as simple as just downloading a movie or song. If you wanted to see a movie, you paid to see it in a theater, or maybe by chance it was on TV or you bought a TV guide and you could see it coming up and you planned to watch it. BEFORE everyone have a beta or VHS to record off a TV. Music, unless you heard it on a radio, you had to go buy an LP, 8 track, cassette or later a CD. Nothing came without some effort, so everyone appreciated things a lot more back then. Artists knew that people weren't going to spend money unless something was worth the money, so artists really put in effort to make the price of their media worth what people had to pay to access it.
The marginal cost of 1 additional sale of so many items now is close to 0, thus the concept of expendability has spread to many other arenas.
We also went to video rental stores and ended up having pizza parties at anyone’s house on the weekends watching movies.
Because there was no call waiting, and our moms could be on that phone for hours, we would also just show up at someone's house. And it was OK.
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