Let's get physical
Recently I’ve been thinking about physical media. I’m a pretty big fan of physical media, especially when it comes to my beloved records, but I’ve actually been getting more into buying BluRay discs vs. buying a digital copy of something because then I know that I OWN it and they can rip it out of my cold, dead hand. A few years back, we KonMari’d the house and I got rid of 95% of my CDs that I had been collecting since I was 16. I saved all of Madonna’s studio albums and greatest hits packages and a handful of signed CDs and others that would be impossible to replace and donated the rest of them to the library. I rationalized that I had digitized all of them and they were all in iTunes now so I didn’t need the physical CDs any longer. And while I mostly stand by that decision (they were largely gathering dust anyway), a part of me is sad that I parted with all of them.
Nowhere is the need for physical media (or the purchase of a non-DRM digital file that you store on your hard drive) more essential for me than with music. Music and my love of it is something that basically makes me who I am and I get so irrationally angry when I meticulously create a playlist on a streaming service and then, when I go back to it 6 months or a year later only to find that one of more of the songs are no longer available due to licensing or some such bullshit. The fact that they can tear the song away from me without so much as a warning just irks me to no end.
For example, why on EARTH is “One More Chance” and “I Want You (Orchestral)” from Madonna’s 1995 hits collection Something To Remember not available for streaming on Spotify?
As the Tootsie Roll pop commercial says, the world may never know.
Another good example of this - I’ve recently been kind of into the group Swing Out Sister, and their 1992 album Get in Touch With Yourself is nowhere to be found on streaming services - not even the iTunes store. Thank God the song I remember from that album, “Am I The Same Girl”, is available on a hits album of theirs. The only way you can listen to this album is to go buy the CD, which I’m seriously considering doing on eBay. I mean, for $3.99 how can I go wrong?
I guess my point to all of this is I’m sad that we’ve devalued music and entertainment in general so much so that we are willing to rent access to it vs. buying it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blinded by nostalgia - I spent many a hard earned dollar (or 17) on a CD with only 2 good songs. I love being able to listen to a single remix of a song instead of having to pay for 7 slightly different remixes of a song on a CD maxi single. But I don’t know, what have we sacrificed by turning music into an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord? I generally don’t like streaming as a business model but it’s clear that’s what we’re doing now when it comes to music and me bucking the trend is certainly not going to change anything.
Still, I wish that streaming could support the artist in such a way that they can continue to produce their art and let me tell you, streaming ain’t it. So that’s why I’ll always do what I can and buy vinyl from the artists’ stores instead of getting free shipping on Amazon. I want them to make that next album that I will pay a little more for the current one.
Now excuse me while I go buy a Swing Out Sister CD like it’s 1992.
I’ve sold plenty of CDs over the years — but no longer will. My physical media is MINE. Also, new vinyl has gotten absurdly expen$$$ive. When it’s available, if I want to support an artist (almost always independent), I’ll buy the CD. I buy both new and used CDs, still, along with used vinyl. (New vinyl for me is very rare.) And you better believe I buy new blu-rays and used DVDs; if something stops streaming whether audio or video is effectively ceases to exist, and I’m not letting that happen, as much as possible.
I used to have a large CD collection, around 2500 discs, and in the late 2000s I decided to get into the digital game. After ripping them all into mp3 (variable bit rate to save storage space; I wish I’d had the space to rip them all to 320kbps mp3 or flac) I ultimately ended up selling or giving them away.
Twenty years later I regret the decision. While I still have access to all of the digital files on my server, I miss having the physical media. Recently, after retiring to the UK, I bought my first really nice sound system which came with a CD player. So I’ve started buying used CDs again, primarily filling in albums that aren’t available on streaming and I’m rediscovering the joy in playing physical media again.