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Imagine, for a minute, that you:

1) still go to live music shows
2) go to a live music show in a suburb of the major metropolitan city in your area featuring a band that was big enough that you were willing to drive a little while to be there
3) arrive to find that the opening act is a 17 year old, and he's surprisingly good
4) find at the merch table that this band that you love has a printed catalog of music they recommend, along with prices and mailing addresses, and you can just ship an envelope with $10 in it (or however much tapes cost in 1988) and a few days later a tape would show up at your house, recommended to you by the band that you had just paid money to see.

I spent a *lot* of time in the modern DIY music scene. I ran a venue for several years. I still book shows.

I've almost never seen anything approaching that level of solidarity from modern artists. They have websites and bandcamps and instagram feeds where they share posts from "the homies" and they'll talk about "the homies" but they aren't taking the time to collate and curate the info. They depend on spotify for discovery. They get fucked.