For me, youtube is only nice because of the decades old content that people have put on it. But that is because there is no such quality content made in the world anymore, and that is partially because of the enshittification bought on by the internet.
If it was not the case, youtube won't be that big of a deal. Let me disclose here that I am not a big fan of "on-demand" content.
Also, music ... back in the 90ies, if you were drawn to the obscure side of music, you'd read about it, and could, at best, imagine what it was like, because your local record store didn't have it, the bigger store the next town over didn't have it, and IF anyone could order it was with a non-refundable down payment.
Nowadays, you can probably find it on YT, and that's great IMHO. I my musical horizon would be so much more limited without it.
Also I've learned a lot about guitar repair ...
I have stayed up all night waiting for RHCP's "Otherside" to come on MTv to record it on tape..
Will kids today even understand something like that, is anyone captured by music like that these days?
Nowadays people are captured by music differently, as they were captured by music differently before music could be mechanically or digitally reproduced.
My musical discoveries exploded with the internet, I can't imagine what I would have missed without it.
Something similar with me and "Another Day In Paradise". The first time I heard it was from a cassette my friend recorded from Dubai radio accidentally prefixed with an intro by the radio host..And that intro still comes to mind whenever I hear the song..
>My musical discoveries exploded with the internet
What, MTv didn't work for you for some reason?
There's nothing comparable to something like progarchives.com and similar in my experience of the '80s and early '90s. You had to combine muso friends, music store recommendations and random selections, magazines, artist and genre scheduling on Rage (better than MTV here) and you still barely scratched the surface.
I was recommending the playing of Neil Schon to a guitar playing friend recently and we both observed that neither of us had even heard of Journey until well after their popularity had faded. That you could miss a massive US stadium rock act like that seems preposterous in this day and age.