is going fully digital the right choice?

My own collection: 85 albums, 30 movies and a 2-3 complete series (roughly)

It feels like these days there’s less and less physical stuff being released. CDs are basically gone, DVDs too, and the same is happening with a lot of other things. In a way, ownership is kind of disappearing.

More and more companies are going for the easier, cheaper route of digital copies—whether it's movies, music, or games. The problem is, when everything is digital, the customer doesn't really own anything. Normally when you buy something, it’s yours. But now, that’s not really the case.

Subscriptions have taken over. We're paying monthly to access music, shows, films and more, but it’s more like renting than buying. If your subscription ends, so does your access. And sometimes content just disappears without warning, even if you paid to access it.

It’s definitely convenient, but it also means we have less control. The shift to digital has made a lot of things easier, but it’s also changed what it means to actually own something.

The Pros

Access - Digital media is way more portable, it can be accesed anywhere, you cannot misplace it and its just overall more convenient that having to physically require something (e.g a DVD and a device compatible of playing said DVD to watch a movie) around.

Convenience - Gone are the days of hauling hundreds of DVDs, CDs and whatnot, now you can simply pay a monthly/yearly fee and enjoy a limitless library of content at a moments notice and a few taps away on most devices you may own, what's there not to love?

Value for money - This really depends from person to person and the amount of, say movies, they consume. If one was to watch 10 movies a month for instance and maybe 2-3 seasons of a series, sure, a subscription would be more convenient assuming each DVDd you'd get of a movie costed 5 pounds or more, then you are definitely getting your moneys worth out of that 15-20 pounds a month subscription, even if you don't get to keep it.

But then there's people like me, I tend to find a series and stick with it, for example I am watching a 15 season series, that's not getting finished within the month, judging by my viewing habits it will probably take me 4-5 months to finish it, so assuming I'd pay 15 pounds a month for streaming, so doing the maths here, 15 * 5 = 75 pounds, £75 for a series, that's just not worth it when I can probably find the entire series on DVD for maybe £25-30 and I GET TO KEEP IT AFTER!!! For me that is the superior choice, I get to pay once, watch it at my own pace and it's not going anywhere, companies like Netflix are known for removing titles at usually weeks notice due to licence clashes and whatnot with regulators, which is what I mean by we don't truly own our music, movies or even books anymore if they are digital, they can be gone at a moments notice by various circumstances compared to physical media which can only be taken from you physically. In my case, and some other peoples, a subscription base model just isn't worth it as I don't take advantage of the (mediocre) selection of movies and series streaming platforms have to offer, the promise of digital content was that it eliminated the cost of physical production, the paying people to produce said content and resulted in a cheaper experience for the consumer, but did it really?

The Cons

It's 'yours' - the general public wont think of this much, but basically the movies you watch say on Netflix, they're in your library, but they are not yours. Netflix owns all of them, and with that they have the right to remove, alter or restrict your access for various reasons at a moments notice, it is within their right to do so even if it seems unfair seeing as the consumer paid to access that content, but that's it, the consumer paid for access, not for the content itself.

Price hike, price hike, price hike - One thing streaming had going for it in the beginning was the promise that it was cheaper than cable TV. No adverts, everything on demand, and no more waiting around for your favourite show to air at a specific time. You could watch whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, as much as you wanted.

But now, every company has woken up and decided to make their own streaming service. We’ve gone from just having Netflix to now having just to name a few off the top of my head: Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, Amazon Prime, Discovery+, Apple TV, NowTV, and loads more. [Source]

At first you might think, great, more variety. But then the realisation hits: back in the day, Netflix used to host content from loads of studios. Now, those same studios have pulled their shows and movies off Netflix to host them on their own platforms. It’s a way to get people to sign up just to watch that one show or film. And of course, that means yet another subscription you have to pay for.

If you’re someone who watches a lot of different stuff, suddenly you find yourself subscribed to three, four, even five different services all with separate price tags, usually over £10 a month now. So really, what went from being an advantage as you were getting most of your moneys worth is now an inconvenience, and a costly one at that.

And that’s not even the end of it. Prices have gone up across the board. Netflix used to be around £8.99 a month, now it’s about £14.99. Disney+ went from £5.99 to around £11.99. On top of that, companies keep adding new restrictions and rules. But because people have come to rely on streaming, most just cough up the extra money rather than cancelling.

The most recent and controvertial one was Netflix restricting sharing your password and access to the content with anyone who is not part of your household, outraging many and results in plenty of cancellations, unfortunately not enough for them to U-Turn their decision, and once again unfortunately resulted in many more companies following as they have seen it worked.

It's genius really, the consumer pays more, the company gives them less content and of lesser quality, financially maximising their profit by selling the consumer out basically.

Alternations of content - Many services are known for altering the content hosted on their platforms, wether this is censoring, cutting out or 'remastering' the content to be of higher quality (most times making it look worse). Personally I was never a fan of any of these practices, I believe the content is best viewed the way it was intended, wether that was a different aspect resolution, a different way of colour correction and many more creative choices, erasing or modifying any of those aspects at all feels like an insult and takes away from the original viewing experience the audience was intended to have. This of course being another streaming exclsuvie, as you cannot edit a DVD after someone physically bought it, what you bought is going to be the exact same in 6 months, 1 year, 10 years, can you say the same about streaming however?

Conclusion

Streaming in its early days truly was convenient and had the consumer in mind, but as time moved on, it became more and more greedy and left the consumer behind while demanding more and more money for content you do not truly own, it's esentially just a toxic cycle which has become hard to escape as content increasingly has become exclusive digitally with a lack of physical releases.

Solution?

Buy physical media, most of the stuff you watch won't all be new anyway after all, you will consume stuff probably released in the 90s, 2000s or the early 2010s which can be found all over, especially in thrift stores and certain businesses dedicated to selling refurbished CDs, DVDs, Books and such for cheaper than a year of Netflix if you think about it long term.