you still had to visit a shop

Music Following on from the news of the downing of Blockbuster USA, here's something I really didn't know. At some point in the early nineties they attempted the Spotify model of music distribution, though rather than having unlimited music on your desktop, you still had to visit a shop:

"In 1992, the suits at Blockbuster Inc. realized music was another viable form of entertainment people liked to spend money on. Thus, they bought up two already existing retail music chains—Sound Warehouse and Music Plus—and founded Blockbuster Music. The gimmick at Blockbuster Music was you could listen to any album in the store before you bought it. Actually, the way I remember it, you could listen to every album in the store if you had the time, even if you didn’t buy squat. Each BM location had a lengthy bar set up in the outlet’s center; you picked out one or three or eight CDs, brought them up to the sullen teenage employee “tending” the bar, plopped your ass on a stool, put on the headphones, and let the collected works of John Fogerty or any given Sparks bootleg wash over you like so much warm gin. There were no predetermined time limits, you weren’t really pressured to buy what you were listening to (at least I never was), and the space was large enough to comfortably accommodate plenty of greasy music nerds with questionable hygiene.

Unsurprisingly the chain was sold off not long afterwards. People weren't buying the music as well.