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Pressing Pause on Streaming: Is Physical Media Making a Comeback?
Are people increasingly turning away from the comfort of streaming services and back towards physical mediums? That’s what some people are experiencing, and I’d be lying if it hadn’t crossed my mind as well.
Downsides of streaming services
What a lot of people, myself included, have experienced with streaming services is the sudden disappearance of the show I’m currently watching or a movie I plan to watch. This has been a recurring theme in our house where we’re about to put on the Friday movie with the kids and it’s just gone. Of course, there are always others, but if you’ve hyped up 3 kids for a movie, there’s going to be some disappointment.
Another downside, that’s really not quite a downside, is the way we’ve been watching movies in. Before streaming services we decided on a movie for the evening, put the movie on and watched it. Afterwards we normally did other things. Now, the ease of starting another movie after the first one allows for whole evenings spent on the couch in front of the black box. The movie is nowhere near as “important” to the setting anymore.
Recent uptick in physical sales
According to
BBC News, there’s been a recent uptick in the sales of physical visual, and more specifically Blu-ray discs. Despite being more expensive than their streamed counterparts they are steadily on the rise.
“If you hold it in your hand, it’s yours”
Personally, I believe a lot of people simply have started getting tired of the endless subscriptions we pay for different services. I myself have been going over my old CD-collection and am looking to possibly purchase a new stereo to rid myself of Spotify. It’s a good service, but I’m generally listening to the same songs and artists over and over, paying the approximate price for an album every month.
If I purchase 12 albums per year, I have exactly 12 albums after one year that I never have to pay for again. I can download the songs to my phone and listen to when I’m not home,
at the same time my wife or kids listen to the same album at home.
Buy it once, enjoy it forever.
Will streaming become a thing of the past?
It’s quite unlikely that streaming will go away anytime soon. It’s simply too convenient and comfortable to put on and just leave in the background. It’s also a great way to find common ground, if you take date home for an evening on the couch. Instead of browsing through your highly specific movie list of documentaries of the Roman Empire, she might want something more easily digestible.
As the streaming industry will inevitably become more normalised in the coming years, it will settle for a somewhat smaller audience than currently. Currently, there are too many streaming services that produce too much bad quality stuff and doesn’t have enough of the good stuff that will have to be swallowed by the others, one way or another.
Giants don’t like to sell things that can be resold
When looking at the numbers, physical retail of movies, etc. aren’t exactly going too well, despite the hopefulness of this article. However, we must remember that a lot of people who purchase CDs and physical movies don’t always purchase them new. There’s been a significant uptick in second hand sales in pretty much all markets recently. It’s become cool to reuse and repurpose things. This doesn’t show in any kind of statistics.
E.g. I have a friend who buys- and sells old vinyl records online and makes quite a nice profit off of them. None of these transactions are visibly in any type of metric, but the buyers are happy for their new record all the same.
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