Keep Getting Physical

I suppose if I were to declare a religion it’d be for physical media as that’s the subject I preach about most these days. It isn’t that social and political issues are less important, clearly, but that screaming into the void of the internet won’t do much to change those things. 

Obviously. 

WHEREAS I hope that my reminding you, gentle reader, that ownership matters and that media matters, it will make you think twice about ‘going digital.

AND BELIEVE ME, I get the draw. 

Who doesn’t want access to everything at the poke of a button?

I have my music digitized, and it’s great. 

But I also kept the CDs. 

Why?

Because technology breaks and fails. 

And because while I was burning every one of those several hundred CDs the external hard drive fell over and nuked all of the work I’d done. 

Whoops. 

Now though, we have corporate America deciding that media is dead. 

They need space to put out more wi-fi toasters and Bluetooth toothbrushes, don’t you know?

They don’t realize that you need to have something to SHOW on that huge television of yours. 

OH, but STREEEEEAMING. 

Only the prices keep rising don’t they, as the choices decline. 

At this point you need to have half a dozen services just to see the things you want and those are never a constant. Anything can be pulled and shelved at any time so the dream of all content at your fingertips is just another dream that never came true, like flying cars. 

These stores could find space for movies, music, and games if they wanted to. They could figure out ways to display them so that they didn’t take up space, keeping extra stock behind the scenes with a notice to replace that sold item once it’s out the door.
They don’t want to though.

MEDIA IS DEAD!

Corporate America cares only about cutting cost, cutting labor, and raising prices. 

They want money. 

Which is what we all want. 

The difference is that the average person isn’t deciding the future of how the human story is told. 

The Christian conservatives want to burn and ban books. 

The corporations want to kill physical media. 

And Hollywood wants everything streaming…so long as it’s popular, but once it’s not it’s gone, baby, gone. 

It’s funny that for so long I was among those who looked at vinyl fans as dinosaurs that wouldn’t let go of the past and didn’t see that they were preserving some of our story. Some of our history. 

All things being equal a record IS different than a CD, a cassette, or an 8-track. 

We need to embrace who we are and what makes us who we are. 

We need to preserve our history. 

Not hoard. 

Preserve. 

There’s a difference. 

None of this is to say to go out and buy everything and keep multiples of all the things you love. It’s to say that you should keep physical media of the things you love, a copy, or whatever you feel you want/need. 

It’s to say that I don’t trust that we’ll lose access to digital files, rights can be removed for their use, or streaming content can’t just go away. 

It’s to say that we should take ownership of the things that give us hope, and happiness, and speaks to us. 

It’s to say that we are creatures that are the culmination of the things that moved us, and inspired us. 

We should embrace that. 

If there are a handful of records we love, we should keep and play and love them. 

If there are CDs that mean something we should keep them.

If there are movies we love then the same thing goes. 

Get the version you want and keep it because it may just disappear one day. 

Heck, think of the music of your youth. 

Not the big stuff stuff but the stuff you loved and never found a huge fanbase to join that also loved it. 

Some of that stuff is disappearing. 

You can get an expensive used copy of it…maybe. 

But maybe not. 

Same with movies. 

The major studios are drying up as they are acquired in mergers that don’t expand distribution or add to the offerings but simply add numbers to a portfolio and movies to a catalog.

There are so many films Disney isn’t releasing of their own, and then you add Fox Studios and it gets scary to thing of how many movies they control.

We are seeing the dystopian future happen before our eyes, all in the name of money and bottom lines. Who would EVER have thought a film could be made and then shelved because it was better business?

That’s insane!

But it’s how the world works now.

There are more places to try to get your films out but they are controlled by a handful of corporations that don’t always know what the heck they want to do. They serve a board, investors, and the bottom line and nothing else. Not that the need for money is new, but now it’s all there is.

People don’t wanna be famous because they want to change the world, they want it so they have influence and attention, and are enviable.

I ADORE movies and horror but when movies are being remade after just a handful of years that says something.

It’s IP over history.

Over impact.

Over art.

Take a decade like the 1980s and how many films came out and most of those are not even on DVD, let alone anything else. It’s like the records that were never made into CDs or anything else.

We are losing our media with every generation and now we’re at the precipice where we’ll start losing everything to corporate greed and their obsession with forcing people to stream everything…but everything corporation cares enough to put out.

Movies are being intentionally buried and it’s just the way it is.

Same with music, with books, with everything. 

Now more than ever, we see the true face of Hollywood and corporate America and it doesn’t care. 

They don’t care. 

About history.
About art. 

About anything but the bottom line and lining their pockets. 

Like so much in the world, people don’t care about a thing until it affects them. 

Well, it’s going to start affecting everyone sooner than you think. 

The world is changing, and the great big beautiful tomorrow we were promised has an entry fee and once you get in you realize that it’s not the world of the future we were promised. 

It’s a grocery store with one, long aisle and things are starting to look, taste, and sound the same because it’s cheaper to make things that way. 

Hold on to what you love, friend, and don’t let yourself be bullied into jettisoning everything because some trend says you should. 

Don’t hoard, but don’t force yourself to live a joyless life after getting rid of things in the hope of ‘decluttering’. 

Girl, clutter sometimes defines who we are, and if you don’t know that, then friend, you don’t know humans very well. 

…c…