The end of physical media

Opinion Piece 

“Now I have become death, destroyer of worlds” - Netflix, probably. Source: Unsplash.  

I miss grabbing a newspaper for my mum at the supermarket checkout.  

I miss flicking through our CD folder after I’d been given music privileges for a road trip.  

I miss when books didn’t cost $40.  

I miss United Video.  

With growing up comes the inevitable, dreaded ch-, oh I can’t even say it. Cha … chan… change.  

I feel sick.  

You may say I’m overreacting but let me mourn a little bit. I remember the day The Warehouse announced it would stop selling DVDs and Blu-ray, what, three years ago? There are no more video stores in the South Island, and physical formats of music have become something reserved for collectors.  

All in due time, I suppose – we have evolved, and our technology with it. Streaming services have replaced physical media for almost everything - music, movies, TV, news, books. Media exists primarily within the digital realm, meaning it is now everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  

But I wonder, is the convenience worth what we have left behind? 

Consumption, for the last few decades, has been built upon and governed by convenience. And what gets more convenient than instant accessibility to, portability, and unlimited copies of whatever media you wish to consume? Instead of paying for each individual product, you pay the monthly base-rate with no extra cost – what a bargain.  

Except, with the subscription model, you never actually own what you’re paying for. Sure, you have access to a bunch of things until you stop paying, but there is no certainty that these platforms will always deliver. The day Joni Mitchell removed her music from all popular streaming services was the day I began collecting CDs again. She’s back now if you didn’t know, but those two years without her were rough.  

Digital media brings a loss of permanence. Weird new licensing regulations mean that at any given moment, a company can remove something from their platform forever.  

Content gets removed all the time, so much so that people beg poor social media interns in a company’s TikTok comment section to bring them back – as if they have such authority.  

It feels like each streaming service gets a turn with a specific movie for a couple of months, before it’s handed over to the next, and then inevitably discarded in some twisted, fucked-up version of pass-the-parcel.  

If there is a particular movie or TV show you want to watch that is not available on any platform, what other choice do you have than piracy? “You could suck it up and watch something else?” Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!  

All of these aspects combined begs the question of whether this new era of media consumption is actually more convenient, and therefore better. I’ve seen the argument floating around that streaming is more environmentally friendly. And it sounds correct - less plastic, less clutter, less bad, right?  

But this is based on the notion that someone would consume the exact same content whether it was physical or online. And I’m unsure if that’s fair. The sheer amount of media now available to us – behind a tiny little paywall – is extraordinary, so much so that it becomes overwhelming. I myself know that I have definitely watched and listened to more things than I would have otherwise, simply because it was there and technically free.  

See, there has been a shift in how content is consumed since the rollout of streaming services. The price of streaming means you have to be selective with what you subscribe to, especially when you’re broke and living away from home – thanks to Netflix’s password-sharing rule. Since you are paying for thousands of movies and shows and songs at once, why not actually consume all of them?  

This is reflected on the business side, too. Medium-budget movies skip the cinema and go straight online, the demanded frequency of news has overridden everything else, and I have a Spotify Premium account solely because there’s a student discount.  

Obviously, there’s still a market for nostalgia. Vinyl, CDs, blu-ray special editions are still ogled over in their respective communities. My mother still buys the newspaper at the supermarket checkout. And I will still spend $40 on a book.  

Is it a rebellion against streaming culture? Or simply because it’s just fun? Can these two mediums coexist? I use Spotify and I collect CDs. I look at DVDs in op shops without ever buying them, and then stream Pride and Prejudice (2005 obvs) for the umpteenth time. I get my news from websites, but do the sudoku’s in my mother’s paper.  

There is room for both, but the irritability lurking behind a sole streaming society makes me nervous about what the future of media holds.