Netflix streams movies and TV shows straight to your TV. Spotify and Apple Music stream music from your phone, through your car and into your headphones. Google Stadia promises to stream video games for you, Marvel and DC offer digital comic books and Amazon sells ebooks by the millions. Will streaming swallow up all physical media?
Streaming and Physical Media
Convenience
Some people will trade anything for convenience. Ownership, affordability and quality are all negotiable as long as the thing in question can be acquired conveniently. Consider the success of apps like Uber and Airbnb. The quality of the service or product isn’t as important, to some, as the sheer convenience of it.
The same goes for media. In 2019, one need not own any hardware aside from a television and a smartphone, and they can still experience the breadth of entertainment. Music can be streamed, TV shows and movies can be beamed right in. Soon, even video games will be streaming right to your TV, no hardware needed.
What You Lose
The only problem with this distribution model is that, in the end, the consumer owns nothing. No albums they can collect, no DVDs or Blu-Rays they can go back and watch. When the streaming platform they use loses the rights to their favorite media, it’s just gone.
Not only that, but you have no resale value. Spending money on streaming subscriptions nets you nothing real. You get the experience of the content you’d like to stream, of course, but when all is said and done, you can’t sell the old media. You don’t own any media: you’ve spent hundreds and have nothing to show for it.
Is This Worth It?
In some cases, it’s not that big of a deal. You would likely spend much more than a Netflix or Spotify subscription to experience all the movies and music you’ve experienced just to own the physical media. But what do we lose when we give up ownership of everything? If you own no books, no movies, no music, the content you consume becomes curated.
The Future
It seems unlikely that the future will be streaming-only. Streaming services certainly aren’t going anywhere any time soon: they’re multibillion-dollar enterprises. However, physical media isn’t going extinct, either. People love their stuff. Holding a book, or a record, or a DVD case in your hand has a certain inimitable quality that streaming will never replace.