If You Can't Hold It, You Don't Own It

The return to physical media started as a niche hobby for hipsters. Now, owing to megacorp greed, it’s developing into a rebellion against digital dependency.

Over the past twenty years, tech companies assured us that physical media were outdated relics. Why fill your shelves with books, CDs, and vidya discs when you could access any story, song, or game from your phone?

The future they promised was convenient, affordable, and permanently accessible.

People accepted the deal. Until companies started revoking access to media their customers paid for.

So those customers can hardly be blamed for wondering If I paid for it, why can someone else take it away?

A recent article reported on growing enthusiasm for CDs, DVDs, vinyl records, and other tangible entertainment formats. Against expectations, younger consumers are increasingly embracing old media.

It’s important to place that phenomenon in the proper perspective. Generation Z grew up with streaming as the default. They have no personal memories of the time when buying music required visiting a record shop, or reading the newest release meant a trip to Barnes & Noble.

Yet more and more Zoomers are seeking out physical media.

Nostalgia, is a fair explanation for the retro trend among Gen X and Gen Y; the Mall Generation and the NES Generation. But pining for a fondly remembered past can’t account for old media adoption by people who can’t remember it.

The real reason people of all ages are flocking back to physical formats; one megacorps won’t want to hear, is that those same companies rug-pulled their customers. They promised better pricing and convenience, along with unlimited access. Then they systematically restricted access while jacking up prices and making the consumer experience a frustrating ordeal.

One wonders just what these companies thought would happen when they replaced property with permissions. The only rational answer is they somehow assumed customers would never notice the bait and switch.

Unfortunately for the megacorps, people are starting to notice.

A lot of people.

Look, the original streaming pitch made sense. Why buy a box set containing a whole season of a TV series on DVD if you only want to watch one episode? Even more to the point, why buy the whole album for $20 when it only has one good song?

We won’t even get into the bloated ripoff that was cable TV.

For a while, streaming looked like an excellent bargain. Then every studio, network, and label launched its own streaming service. The tangled web of licenses scattered their catalogs across myriad platforms.

And at last, like cable before, it, streaming raised subscription fees and brought back ads.

Streaming gradually turned into early aughts TV, but costlier, less coherent, and with worse programming.

Then platforms started pulling movies and whole series without warning, and we remembered why DVDs are still pretty great.

It didn’t have to be this way. All these companies had to do was add convenient digital delivery without taking away ownership. Independent authors like me have offered our readers DRM-free eBooks for years.

So how did the entertainment companies flub what should have been a slam dunk?

Read the full post on Substack.