Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Hey, it's Alan Cross, and this summer we thought we would do something special with the

ongoing history podcast and give you, our fantastic audience, a bonus episode from now through Labor Day.

We're going all the way back to the spring

of 2010 and a 15-part deep dive into the history of Alternative Rock. It's the history of

Alt Rock series. So every Sunday, you'll get a brand new episode of this series that examines

every single facet of Alt Rock from the 1950s right up to, well, pretty much today.

And don't worry, because we'll have a brand new episode of the ongoing history podcast for you

every Wednesday as well. So you're getting two podcasts every week now through Labor Day.

I hope you enjoy. And thanks for supporting the ongoing history of new music.

To fans of any kind of rock, May 18th, 1999 seemed like the end of the world.

The Backstreet Boys released their new CD that day.

It was called Millennium.

And on that first day, it sold more than 500,000 copies.

By the end of the week, it had sold 1.134 million, a new all-time sales record. And those are just the U.S. numbers. He had in the rest of the world, and the total

was much higher. And it was only going to get twice as bad. Just 308 days later, in sync, another bloody boy band,

set an even scarier record. By the end of its first week in the stores, there are no strings

attached albums sold 2.4 million copies. And then just 56 days after that, Britney Spears sold half a million copies of,

oops, I did it again on day one, and 1,3193,193 in its first seven days. When the dust cleared

at the end of 2000, it was very clear that vacuous pop music had taken over the universe. These CDs weren't selling just by the tens of millions.

They were selling by the hundreds of millions.

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