Jukebox Then, Videoke Now

Bloggers are advised to always check what were the most visited articles in their blogs and as much as possible make some follow-up posts about them. Doing so would more or less give their readers additional information on topics that interest them. I should have followed the advice long time ago but for some reasons, I am only doing it now. I hope that I can post more often about my most visited topics which I shall reveal to you  one by one as I make follow-up articles about them.

The  “cost of living in Philippines” is one key phrase that always send organic traffic from search engines to this blog. If the searcher would click my blog in the search engine results page (SERP), he would land on my blog post entitled Cost Of Living In The Philippines wherein the costs of basic commodities, transportation, recreation and entertainment in the old days were compared to how much they cost today. I do not know if the visitors to the said blog are students researching on the topic or people who want to visit the country but I hope that the information helps.

My real intention in writing the cost of living in our country was to reminisce how life was in my younger days and compare to how it is at present. The costs enter the discussion as a matter of knowing the affordability of the things I write about. I wish to post more about these comparisons and I wish to start with this post on costs of listening and/or enjoying popular songs and music. I will also discuss the some upcoming theater shows that I think might seem of interest to you.

In the old days, we listened to songs and music through transistor radios. Few families had televisions where musical shows were shown and  some also have phonographs where they could playback recorded songs and music. For the young people and a few old ones, there was also the jukebox in some places where they can play their favorites for only ten (PhP0.10) centavos per song. It was in the jukebox that we repeatedly heard and memorized the songs of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dave Clark Five, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and others.

Jukebox then is videoke today. While we only listen to the lyrics of a song as it plays in a jukebox, the same can now be read in a video screen of a videoke machine. You need to drop a five-peso (PhP5.00) coin for every song that you want to sing in a videoke machine. Five pesos is fifty (50x) times more expensive than ten centavos; however, the present minimum wage of PhP404.00 in Metro-Manila is 101x more than the P4.00 minimum wage in the old days. Do you see the comparison?