Picture this:
It’s a Friday night in 2005 and you are getting ready to have some friends over to watch a movie. You’re all stocked up on Doritos, Mountain Dew, Sour Skittles, and now the only thing you’re missing is the perfect film to set the tone for the fun night that’s about to ensue. Your mother is blasting Now That’s What I Call Music Vol. 12 on the warn out speakers of her baby blue Chrysler mini-van. Next stop: destiny. You start to get anxious staring at the plethora of options lining the endless shelves at Blockbuster Video. As you pace the aisles, you start to become overwhelmed with choices. Whatever you choose will determine the vibe. Everything is riding on this decision. You wander into the horror section but of course mom won’t let you rent Freddy VS Jason, which is probably for the best because the front cover alone was a little too freaky for you anyways. She recommends something more age appropriate like Madagascar and you immediately scoff it off. But then, almost like a heavenly gift from God himself, you see it shimmering like a beacon in all its glory. The Fast And The Furious. This is the one. It is going to be the most epic night of your life.
While everybody might not share the exact experience as my childhood memories, a lot of people who grew up around the same time probably went through a similar situation in one way or another. And as trivial and nostalgia drenched as that scenario may sound, there is a harsh reality in which the latter half of Gen Z and beyond may not have ever gotten to experience anything like that. Nowadays if you want to find a movie you just boot up Netflix, scroll for a few minutes, and you’re ready to rock. With the ever-expanding world of the internet and the ease of countless streaming platforms, humans have access to nearly most of all media ever created right at our fingertips. In the current social meta people stream everything. Movies, TV shows, music, video games, and even books (remember those?). The modern era is simply just ultra convenient. But does that convenience come at a cost? Maybe I’m grasping at straws trying to hold onto the past, but I truly believe that there is still a lot of value in collecting physical media in today’s world.
Now, why would someone choose to own something that is already included in a decently priced subscription service as well as thousands of other titles? The answer is in the question. To own it. When you stream media, you are merely paying for the rights to access it. But these rights can be revoked at any time without notice from the service/provider. It’s all in the small text that everybody scrolls past without reading to hit the “I Accept The Terms And Conditions” button, unknowingly signing away your soul to the corporate devil. When I was younger i used to go to Game Stop and buy all the video games that my first high school job could afford me. I didn’t like buying digital copies of games because if I was paying the same amount of money, I would rather have a solid product I could hold in my hands. The first time I paid full price for a game on the PlayStation Network store instead of buying the disc, the game shortly after got delisted from the store and removed from my library. It is now unplayable without any option for a refund. After getting mad about wasting $60 on a game that I could no longer play, I looked into PlayStation’s policies about purchasing digital copies of games. They stated that if the merchant (PlayStation) did not wish to renew the license for certain content, said content would no longer be available. And the only way to access that content was to buy it… and they don’t offer refunds??? That is such a backwards system in my opinion. If I had purchased that same game on a physical disc instead, it would still be playable. The only way it could be revoked is if someone broke into my house and stole it from me the old fashioned way. This is just one example, but it really made me start to think about the logistics of physical versus digital media and why I tend to favor physical in many situations.
Whichever option people decide to choose is equally valid though and each has their own benefits. But us (the consumers) aren’t the only ones who this preference affects. Content creators, artists, production companies, and media conglomerates alike all get impacted by the method their products are consumed. Physical and digital media have separate avenues that they generate profit. Digital is typically from licensing costs to streaming services and monthly subscription fees, while physical is typically from number of individual units sold. I will use Spotify as an example as it is my music streaming service of choice (no shade to Apple Music). On average, Spotify pays artists between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream. Which means if a million people listen to your song, you will only make between $3,000 and $5,000. Yes, this does add up if you stack enough streams, but in the grand scheme of things those are pretty low numbers considering the money it takes to produce those songs and other expenses that go along with actually getting them out there. Let’s say that a local fairly unknown band releases their debut album on Spotify and a hundred people listen to it. The band on average would make a measly 40 cents. Now, if the same hundred people who streamed that album bought CDs from the band directly at $10 a piece, the band would make $1,000. So in some cases, especially on a smaller scale, people buying physical media can literally be the difference between artists continuing to make their art or forcing them to stop because they are taking too many losses.
On the opposite side of the spectrum we have social super powers like Taylor Swift, AKA the highest grossing artist of all time. Her numbers are definitely more extreme than your hometown has-beens. In 2023 alone, she banked over $100 million in pure streaming royalties. I don’t even feel the need to look into her album sales because when you’re making money in that capacity, it doesn’t really matter where it’s coming from. It’s all gravy at that point. And I’m going out on a limb and guessing her sales figures are absolutely mind blowing just knowing how devoted her army of Swifties are to their queen. Someone of her caliber doesn’t need to sell any albums ever again and can still continue to generate more money than the average person will see in their entire lifetime. But for all the small guys out there trying to make a living by selling their art, every sale really does count and streaming is more of a means of exposure, which is honestly just as valuable.
Despite how much I seem to be advocating for buying physical, I still heavily partake in digital media consumption as well. They both have their place to me. For example, every morning on my commute to work I blast a playlist of my most hyped jams in attempt to fool myself into not being depressed (some days it works better than others). Even though I own over 200 CDs, most modern cars don’t have built in CD players anymore so I couldn’t even listen to them if I wanted to. Rewind 10 years ago, and that was the only option for me because my car was older and didn’t have Bluetooth, or an AUX for my iPod, and all of my local radio stations were a joke, so CDs were the clear choice for me. While I do stream music in the car, when I want to to listen to music at home I am much more apt to select a record from my collection to spin instead. Another example of me finding the balance between physical and digital media is when I first started buying movies. In the early stages I just wanted to have the biggest DVD collection possible because I thought that more was better. Before too long I had acquired more films than I would ever be able to watch without quitting my job, most of them being cheap garbage that I would find in the $5 bin at Walmart or often covered in a questionably sticky substance from a Goodwill. It took me years to realize that the quality of my collection was actually more important than the quantity. It was a hard process to carefully curate what I owned to actively reflect my interests and likes, but it was definitely worth the extra effort. So now instead of just blind-buying movies I’ve never seen and might potentially hate, I stream the movies I am interested in seeing and if I like them enough, I will then buy them. It’s almost like a trial run to see what makes the cut. You should only collect what you love. When you start collecting just for the numbers, that’s when it turns into hoarding, but that’s a whole other rant.
Another one of the perks of physical media is that sometimes the packaging is just as cool as what is inside of it. You can really tell when distributors put the proper love and care into the products they release. Many times they include added extras and artwork to enhance your experience and further represent what you are buying. A common thing you can find in a lot of vinyl records are fold-out posters of the artist and lyric sheets so you can sing along in the wrong key. Some other cool things I have gotten in the past across multiple formats include: trading cards, stickers, magnets, postcards, and even fake hair. Yes, when I bought my copy of Zoolander it came with a Derek Zoolander wig so you could practice Blue Steel in the comforts of your own home. Having your media on display is also a great way to start conversations when you have guests over. They can browse your shelves and you can geek out about how you have some of the same interests. Or better yet, somebody might see a title they are curious about and you can potentially turn them on to their next favorite. Part of the reason I own certain formats of media, mostly VHS tapes in this case, is for the heavy sense of nostalgia. There’s just something about popping in a copy of Free Willy and seeing the trailer for Batman: The Mask Of Phantasm that transports me back to my grandmother’s living room as a child. VHS is honestly one of my favorite ways to watch movies because it’s such a comforting and therapeutic experience. Yes, I obviously know that the picture quality is utter crap and they sometimes look like they were filmed on a potato, but all of the grain and crackles make my little heart feel a special kind of way that an ultra clean 4K version of the same film just couldn’t. It’s hard to explain. It does make me sad to think that there have been times where younger people from the generation of kids who are born with an iPhone in their hands asked me why I had movies on my shelf when “Netflix has like every movie ever.” I may only be the ripe age of 27, but it’s times like these that make me feel like I’m old enough to be committed to a nursing home.
When I was growing up, Netflix only offered discs!
I’m not trying to convince you that one way of consuming media is better than any other, but it is important to see the reasoning behind each side. I will say that if I didn’t spend so much money on buying somewhat obsolete items, I could have put a much bigger down payment on my house and made my monthly payments less financially crippling, but I genuinely do enjoy those things so in the end it was money well spent. I’m also not saying that you should dust off the old DVD player to relive your glory days, but it also might come in handy when your internet goes down or if Hulu removes Step Brothers and you’re really hankering to watch it for the thousandth time. To each their own. Life is short so spend it doing whatever makes you happy. Thank you for enduring my nonsensical babblings for this long, I will now let you get back to whatever it is that you do. And after all of this talk about movies, I think I might go and watch Freddy VS Jason again. Too bad my mom didn’t let me rent it back in the day. 8 year old me would have loved that shit.