THE DEATH OF PHYSICAL MEDIA?

In the seventies when videotape technology came along, the entertainment industry’s shysters got
together and came up with the idea of overpricing videotapes to such a level that the average consumer
could not just buy their favorite movie and watch it anytime they wanted. This created the video rental
store industry which itself fell, in due time, to the streaming business, piloted by Netflix, etc.

En route to the status quo, a collector culture rose, one which remains steadfast even today in the face of the fresh announcement from a few big retailers that they are doing away with DVDs before year’s end. I’ve settled pretty well into the habit of streaming. As big a film buff as I am, I’m not particularly driven to collecting personal copies of my favorite films. While there are films I do love, even those don’t get multiple views in a short period of time. Generally, it’s years between viewings of even my top ten.

This guy’s weekend is my year. Thanks for the free pic, alamy.

But I get it. Having that box set of the Texas Chainsaw movies sitting on your shelf can be a satisfying feeling. Or would be.

My reason is that there are so many films I have never seen and so many dropping so often, I feel
inclined to watch and experience something I haven’t yet seen, especially if it’s from an earlier era.

I realized when the Blu ray era came along that technological advancements are only accelerating. Just
as I got an impressive array of DVDs, they began to go obsolete. Before this, I had a half-hearted
assortment of VHS, mostly pre-viewed copies. I’ve always been… perhaps too frugal, let’s say, to drop
thousands of dollars on non-necessities. Blame it on practical-minded parents, or the income level of
said parents.

The only thing I’ve ever fervently collected is Godzilla figures, comics, books and every media of film.
The Big G was my first favorite film franchise and during my childhood Godzilla goods were scarce at best. All this to say collecting is a legitimate hobby that brings joy to a lot of people. How will they fare in a world of mere digital files and streaming swap-outs?

An exciting upgrade from paper dolls.

Walk into a Barnes and Noble and you will see, aside from that most archaic of physical media – The Book
– an impressive selection of vinyl LPs. In the early days of recorded music, the industry created the album format, which in turn came to be contained in a much smaller and more easily produced and marketed package – The Cassette Tape.

A magnificent collection worth tens upon tens of dollars.

Cassettes offered a significant advantage in that it was possible to record onto them. While many music
lovers were content to use this new technology to crib their favorite tunes from the radio, complete with DJ chatter, ramp-ups and overlaps, those with a good system could replicate an LP or official release tape almost flawlessly. The same was possible with VHS cassettes.

For the film industry, DVDs were an attempt at reclaiming exclusivity for owners of creative properties (i.e. studios and distributors) but also at presenting films and shows in a much purer and clearer format than VHS could.

This too could soon be easily replicated. It seems that the days of strict studio or label control of
entertainment media essentially died with the advent of affordable home recording equipment.
So the only way to counter this was to make official copies of the release more valuable in and of
themselves, as record albums had been, rather than simply being a package from which the material could be watched or heard.

Let’s see you duplicate THIS, pirate-asses!

Special packaging, extras, outside of the film/album “file,” such as photos, T-shirts, posters, masks, 3D
glasses and customized cases brought interest back to collecting the movie instead of just having the
movie.

As this era of various forms of processed plastc dies, pessimists might be inclined to predict that the simple having will once again be enough, until Bezos and his contemporaries figure out how to make a non-physical collection of data seem as meaningful as a two-disk steelbook with foldout posters and empassioned, celebratory literature. Expect access codes, campaigns to add artificial arbitrary value to first-source releases (did I coin that?) and finally, urgently, piracy crackdowns. On the films and music of course. Not for artists whose work is brazenly copied and repackaged in the guise of AI generated content.

Like LPs, laserdiscs and VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs and blu-rays will eventually become the focus of a fervent
collectors after market, with conventions, shops, newsletters and documentaries devoted there unto.
Will cloud files? Yeah, probably somehow. I don’t mean to disdain the end of an era in which the use of
resources which aren’t doing the environment any favors faces decline. But I can’t help but cynically
smile a little at how the corporate entertainment industry is shooting itself in the foot.

You can forget this year’s golden yacht trade-in boys! Better luck next year!