Physical Media

I might create a forum post about this too bc I really would love to have a conversation with some other people about this, but I just wanted to come and talk about the death of physical media and how it's impacted entertainment. I apologize in advance cause this is gonna sound like a poorly written essay.

First, I am a HUGE fan of physical media. Collecting it is a passion of mine. I have tons of books, tapes, discs, records, media players, e-readers, etc. and they are my prized possessions (will be making a youtube tour of them all when I move into my new house). As someone who is so passionate about physical media, I'm also really passionate about the damage it's new lack of popularity is doing to the quality of entertainment. We'll start with movies.

Back in the day movies used to come out in theaters, run for a while, then they were released to the public in physical form. This release of VHS tapes, DVDs, Blu-Rays, etc. was a second big boom in revenue for the creators of the film. It was to be expected that a lot of money would come in way after the movie left theaters simply because of the sales of the physical copies. However, when streaming was introduced and less people started buying physical copies, profit went way down. This meant that now any sequels, prequels, and franchises now had lower budgets because of the lack of money made from the original. Not only were sequels affected, but movie quality in general went down as production companies began to lose money and were forced to make budget cuts because of the fact that streaming was taking over and significantly lowering profit. 

Similarly, services like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc. have made it difficult for artists to produce good music like they used to because they are not getting paid enough. Plenty of artists still release their music in physical form, but the success of doing so fully depends on the willingness of consumers to spend their money of said physical copies. But because of the ease of streaming, people aren't particularly inclined to do so.

I say all this to say that streaming led to the death of physical media, which led to a significant decrease in profit for the creators, ultimately leading to lower quality content due to a lower budget. So in conclusion, bring back physical media!