Physical Media is Dead, Long Live Physical Media

Much has been written about the demise of physical media. Long considered the measure of technological progress in audiovisual and computing fields, the 2000s saw this metric seemingly rendered obsolete by the rise of online audiovisual and software distribution services. This has brought us to a period in time where the very idea of buying a new music album, a movie or a piece of software in a physical, or even online, retail store has  become largely impossible amidst the rise of digital-only media.

Even so, not all is well in this digital-only paradise, as the problems with having no physical copy of the item which you purportedly purchased are becoming increasingly more evident. From increases in monthly service costs, to items being removed or altered without your consent, as well as concerns over privacy and an inability to resell or lend an album or game to a buddy, there are many reasons why having the performance or software on a piece of off-line, physical media is once again increasing in appeal.

Even if the demise of physical data storage was mostly a trick to extract monthly payments from one’s customer base, what are the chances of this process truly reverting, and to what kind of physical media formats exactly?

The End Of Ownership

The concept of having audiovisual performances on physical media which you can play at will within the confines of your own abode is relatively new, first brought to the masses by inventions such as the phonograph, starting with wax cylinders, followed by shellac and vinyl records. This brought everything from concerts to stage performances to the home, where the proud owner of this piece of physical media could play it back on its corresponding playback device. This set the trend that would persist until the dominance of CDs.

Similarly, movies would at first be just something that you’d watch in the cinema, then you could catch it on broadcast TV along with an increasing number of series. Owning a copy of your favorite series or movie became possible with VHS, Laserdisc and so on. When home computer systems became prevalent, the software for them was found in magazines, on tapes, diskettes, CDs, etc., with in-store displays using their box art to entice potential buyers.

Yet at all of this has effectively come to an end. LG recently announced that they’ll stop making new Blu-ray players, following the recent decision by Best Buy and other stores to quit selling Blu-rays and DVDs. Optical drives are now firmly considered a legacy feature on laptops and desktop systems, with only a subset of game consoles still featuring this feature and thus doubling as a Blu-ray player with compromises.

Unlike our parents and their grandparents, it looks like today’s generations will not leave behind a legacy of (physical) media that their children and grandchildren can peruse, often not even for books, as these are equally becoming tied into online subscription services. In this Digital Media Age, it seems that the best we can hope for is to temporarily lease an ethereal digital copy by the grace of media corporate overlords.

Digital Media Is Terrible

There are many reasons to mourn the death of physical media, with some pertinent ones laid out for DVDs and Blu-rays in this AV Club article by Cindy White:

• Permanence: you purchase the copy and as long as you take good care of it, it’s yours to do with as you please.
• Better quality: owing to the video compression of digital streaming services, you’ll get a worse audiovisual experience.
• Portability: you can take the physical media with you, lend it to a friend, or even sell it.
• Better for artists: the system of residuals with DVD/BD sales was much more fair to artists.
• Extras: DVD and BD releases would come with extra content, like soundtracks, behind the scenes, interviews, and much more.

Some are beginning to feel uneasy in the face of this dawning realization that before long all our movies, series, books, games and software will be locked behind what are essentially leasing services on our (ad-sponsored) smart TVs, smart phones, smart books and smart computers/consoles in increasingly barren rooms.

Take for example this article  by Amelia over at IGN on physical vs digital media and ownership and the lack thereof. An aspect raised in it is preservation in general, as a streaming platform could decide to put the proverbial torch to (part of) its library and that would be the end of that content, barring any Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)-busting copies. Even so, Amelia finds it hard to ignore the convenience of watching something on these streaming services.

The lack of visual quality is a view that Henry T. Casey over at CNN Underscored shares, with over at The National Faisal Salah and William Mullally advocating for starting that physical media collection. The permanence argument is prevalent here, while the latter article pointing out the hopeful signs of a revival of physical media by smaller (boutique) distributors, but this leaves much of mainstream content firmly digital-only, including recent games like Alan Wake 2 which only got a physical version after fans insisted.

Shallow Libraries

The convenience of flicking on the smart appliance and tuning out on-demand without having to go to a store is a tempting feature that physical media cannot really compete with, yet there’s an argument to be made that physical media sales complement streaming, not unlike how those same sales complemented broadcast TV and cinemas in the past. In fact,  as a corollary one could state that digital streaming services have replaced broadcast TV, rather than physical media. This would make the latter collateral damage, whether intentional or not.

A strong advantage of physical media is also that it’s not limited to being sold by a single store, while digital (streaming) services have very shallow libraries that can make finding a specific piece of content or game a complete nightmare. So the conclusion that people seem to be increasingly coming to is that while digital media isn’t bad by itself, there is a lot of value in physical media that we’re now at risk of losing forever.

Yet if CDs and Blu-rays are dying a slow death today, and the next Microsoft and Sony game consoles may not have an optical drive option any more, is there any hope for a physical media revival?

It’s The Business Model

As alluded to already, digital media-as-a-service will not go away, as it has too many advantages. Especially in terms of low distribution costs, as the logistics of physical media can get rather convoluted. Where the real business case for physical media may be is in the added value. This is something which is observed with a platform like Bandcamp, which is an online music distribution platform via which artists can sell their music and merchandise, including CDs or vinyl records.

All of which points to that the physical formats of the future will likely remain CDs, Blu-rays and even vinyl records and cassette tapes as the most popular formats. Meanwhile for video games on PCs at least there are stores like Good Old Games, who recently launched their Preservation Program that seeks to keep older titles playable on modern systems. This in addition to allowing customers to download the installer for any game they purchase and put it on any kind of physical media which they desire, courtesy of their lack of DRM.

Yet the ticking timebomb under this revival of physical media may be that good players are becoming scarce. Cassette tapes and records increasingly are being played on the same cheap mechanisms, like the Tanashin clones, that are still being churned out by factories in China as Sony and others have abandoned the market. Now it seems that optical drives are facing the same race to the bottom, until one day the only physical media players and readers can be found used for exorbitant prices.

After all, what use is physical media if you have no way to play it?

Featured image: Front panel of a GPO Brooklyn with cassette player (Credit: VSchagow, Wikimedia)