Help deconstructing parts of 點唱機 - 按年份後，當年的流行曲就出來了，一按即點

Question

A Chinese family relative sent me this message (I am not Asian). I need some help deconstructing the message because at times the word sequence or implied idea is lost on me (even when I know most of the grammar rules). So, I have a series of related questions in this post that I hope will help me become a better student of Chinese language. Your patience is appreciated.

The original message

📻📻📻 點唱機 (Diǎn chàngjī)

按年份後，當年的流行曲就出來了，一按即點👆

àn niánfèn hòu, dāngnián de liúxíng qǔ jiù chūláile, yī àn jí diǎn 👆

http://thenostalgiamachine.com/index.html

Google Translate is not that good but delivers the following:

📻📻📻 jukebox

By year after year of pop songs came out, a press that point 👆

My attempt at deconstructing the message with questions (in yellow)

📻📻📻 點唱機 (Diǎn chàngjī) -

Ok, I get this idea as an electric singing machine but what happens when an idea (like this one - 點唱機) can belong to more than one thing? At least to one who has not heard this word before, could there be other interpretations? When I look at the words I thought of radio (not quite right, has news and talk), music-box (not quite, doesn't sing), etc. Jukebox was at the far-end of my list.

按年份後，當年的流行曲就出來了，一按即點👆

àn niánfèn hòu, dāngnián de liúxíng qǔ jiù chūláile, yī àn jí diǎn

àn niánfèn hòu, dāngnián - not sure how this one means "By year after year", I see fèn hòu but I don't follow the thread completely. I read àn nián 按年 as something to be contrasted with dāngnián 當年. Although again with (按年), I'm a bit lost on the implicit meaning. What comes to my mind is two ideas of "pushing down + year." In this case, I'd appreciate some help on this meaning?

Finally, although I can see that 的流行曲就出來了 refers to something popular (流行) came out (出來了),

But I don't quite understand the notion of songs here. Could someone identify what I may be missing?

EDIT:

I can see that my problems center around my not understanding some of the words such as 點, with a context of to order or request... I still can't find the proper meaning in a dictionary or translation program. Just wondering if the meaning is related to another word that changes it's default meaning?

Answer 1

按 (verb: press) 年份 (noun: year) 後 (after)

當年 (noun: that year) 的 (possessive particle) 流行 (adjective: popular) 曲 (noun: song)^* 就 (will) 出來 (verb: appear) 了 (end of action particle)

一 (adverb: upon) 按 (verb: press) 即 (adverb: immediately) 點 (verb: select)

^{* note: 流行曲 (流行歌曲) means "pop songs".}

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Regarding 點唱機, when you break it down the phrase becomes 點 (verb: order [as in ordering a drink at a bar]) 唱 (noun: music, song) 機 (noun: machine, device). From that, we can deduce it is a jukebox, since you normally can't order music on a radio or musicbox. It helps to know that radio is 收音機 and musicbox is 音樂盒, but unfortunately there's no shortcuts around that.

Note that 唱 is far more commonly a verb.

Answer 2

It is a little bit hard to understand. I try to translate it word by word, and hope it can help you.

點唱機

點唱 means request song, so literally it means:

A machine, if you request a song to it, it will play it for you.

按年份後，當年的流行曲就出來了，一按即點

按 here means click, 當年的流行曲 means the popular song of the year, so literally it means:

When you click the year (such as 1980), 
the popular songs of the year (such as 1980) will be played, 
click to request.