I would give up physical media in a heartbeat if there was an option to buy full quality DRM free movies and shows like I can with music. As of right now, blu-rays are still the only realistic way...
I would give up physical media in a heartbeat if there was an option to buy full quality DRM free movies and shows like I can with music. As of right now, blu-rays are still the only realistic way to get this. If physical media dies, I'll probably just switch to piracy. I'm not paying for a DRM-infested "digital copy" that can disappear overnight at the whim of some shitbrained executive.
What infuriates me is media that "disappear overnight" never to return. Poof, just deleted. You get special legal privileges for publishing big enough art, you should have special legal...
What infuriates me is media that "disappear overnight" never to return. Poof, just deleted.
You get special legal privileges for publishing big enough art, you should have special legal responsibilities like actually preserving a copy (i.e. putting a reasonable effort into it at least) of it until copyright runs out and then sending this copy to a public archive.
Would also put somewhat of an incentive to not extend copyright into centuries.
That's it. The entire point of digital downloads, SAAS, subs etc (from a corporate perspective) is expressly that you DON'T own it. It is very clear that you have a licence that can be taken away...
That's it. The entire point of digital downloads, SAAS, subs etc (from a corporate perspective) is expressly that you DON'T own it. It is very clear that you have a licence that can be taken away at any point in time for whatever reason.
Regardless of the quality of digital ownership, it only exists in the ether at the behest of the gatekeepers. You are paying real money for a thing that cannot be owned.
I hadn't bought physical media in years but I bought a specific blu-ray off Amazon instead of buying or renting a digital copy. I finally sat down to watch it and the dammed thing kept on freezing...
I hadn't bought physical media in years but I bought a specific blu-ray off Amazon instead of buying or renting a digital copy. I finally sat down to watch it and the dammed thing kept on freezing at the same spot. I'm going to have to pirate a movie I own just to watch it.
I've never had blu-rays, only DVD's. Are they more fiddly or am I unlucky?
You're unlucky. I have a closet with nearly 400 Blu-Ray discs and I've had only a handful that failed to rip because of a manufacturing defect. Blu-Rays are actually exceptionally durable compared...
You're unlucky. I have a closet with nearly 400 Blu-Ray discs and I've had only a handful that failed to rip because of a manufacturing defect. Blu-Rays are actually exceptionally durable compared to CDs and DVDs.
Did you try cleaning the disc? I've had some discs come with traces of residue from the factory. They read fine after I cleaned them with warm soapy water and a microfiber cloth.
I only tried playing it on my Xbox since I don't have a blu-ray drive for the computer. I really should just get one and do a bunch of ripping and I wonder if its just the Xbox being a pain.
I only tried playing it on my Xbox since I don't have a blu-ray drive for the computer. I really should just get one and do a bunch of ripping and I wonder if its just the Xbox being a pain.
The issue could not be with the disc itself, but with the DRM implementation on the player. The Blu ray protection scheme has an option to force a player to update. This is used when there are...
The issue could not be with the disc itself, but with the DRM implementation on the player. The Blu ray protection scheme has an option to force a player to update. This is used when there are keys found or decrypted. When you insert a new disc it will contain an instruction to invalidate the leaked keys and take the next one from the list. (My memory is a bit hazy on the details, I took a deep dive in this a couple of years ago.)
What could happen, and what I strongly suspect happened to me, is that this update mechanism can be buggy and then the old key gets invalided, but the new ones are not properly installed/downloaded (again, hazy) and then you can have discs that don't play well anymore.
I had two players (to circumvent the idiot region encoding) and it happened on both of them:
I had a multi region disc that played fine in both players
I bought a new disc that also played fine
But once that new disc played in a player, the old disc would not play fine anymore
The nasty thing is that it does not outright refuse to play, instead the image is distorted just enough to make it unwatchable.
Physical media should not be abandoned. Though streaming may be convenient, the risk of censorship is also great in this online only future. If you subscribe to Disney+, you have access to every...
Exemplary
Physical media should not be abandoned. Though streaming may be convenient, the risk of censorship is also great in this online only future.
If you subscribe to Disney+, you have access to every single episode of The Simpsons ever created...except for an episode in season 3 where Michael Jackson voiced one of the characters, which was pulled from the service when his child abuse allegations began to gain more weight posthumously. It ain't the greatest episode of The Simpsons, but it should be available for people to watch if they wish to. But Disney won't put it on its service for fear of tarnishing their "brand".
Disney also owns the 20th Century Fox catalogue now. Classic films like The French Connection have had dialogue containing the N-word censored in them (which, considering The French Connection is a gritty, early 70's New York crime drama, fits the story).
Sure, maybe you can forgo those two instances and think we haven't lost anything culturally. But think of the future. Censorship is not a line you cross, but rather a line that crosses you. The streaming video only future increasingly makes that a line that will become more and more restrictive as the years go on. Our backwards ways should be on full display to our children. We shouldn't be able to hide it through digital censorship.
For the most part I don't mind physical media going away anymore. The one thing I will not accept is the attempt to prevent me from owning the media I like. If you take away all means I can...
For the most part I don't mind physical media going away anymore.
The one thing I will not accept is the attempt to prevent me from owning the media I like.
If you take away all means I can reasonably own the media I want, I will take the unreasonable means of owning it. Sure, that means that you don't get paid anymore, but if you wanted to be paid you would offer me the thing that I want.
I will, however, miss Criterion Collection releases with their cool art, pack-ins, and extras.
Criterion and other boutique labels will probably remain for a while. Physical media as a whole will continue to get more collector based rather than how it used to be for mass consumers.
I will, however, miss Criterion Collection releases with their cool art, pack-ins, and extras.
Criterion and other boutique labels will probably remain for a while. Physical media as a whole will continue to get more collector based rather than how it used to be for mass consumers.
Oh, I figured as much. But on the other hand if the bigger guys pull out that means that the companies that press the discs and manufacture the players will start to go out of business, and from...
Oh, I figured as much. But on the other hand if the bigger guys pull out that means that the companies that press the discs and manufacture the players will start to go out of business, and from there prices will start to soar.
The players will but I think the discs are pretty trivially cheap. Even if they go up by 100% I’m not sure it’ll make a huge difference. Fully custom blu-ray production can be done for about $4...
The players will but I think the discs are pretty trivially cheap. Even if they go up by 100% I’m not sure it’ll make a huge difference.
Add some additional money for packaging and distribution and that basically means . It’s the licensing that costs all the money. At that price point I feel like a machine to do custom pressings should be accessibly priced for a neighborhood bookstore or a hobby shop if they can clear enough business in custom orders.
There’s a decent amount of work (and money) that goes into the design and menus and everything too, which you lose out on at lower scales. But that also doesn’t have to be ruinous.
Good players being expensive is unfortunate, but it’s also a one time expense for a BIFL quality product. A budget level HiFi CD Transport will start at $400, which is a lot, but not really ruinous if it’s a hobby of yours.
I'm actually not super worried about players. Blu-ray being 100% digital means that quality players doesn't really matter so much, and there's a pretty huge market for used equipment considering...
I'm actually not super worried about players. Blu-ray being 100% digital means that quality players doesn't really matter so much, and there's a pretty huge market for used equipment considering that several generations of games consoles support them.
I've kinda wondered why they haven't just moved to something quasi digital? A usb stick with a top level quality copy of the media designed to just work on any machine?
I've kinda wondered why they haven't just moved to something quasi digital? A usb stick with a top level quality copy of the media designed to just work on any machine?
Disc's get scratched and can only be played on specific hardware. A USB stick doesn't get scratched and could be played on a lot more devices (computers, consoles, most TVs, etc) I like the USB...
Disc's get scratched and can only be played on specific hardware.
A USB stick doesn't get scratched and could be played on a lot more devices (computers, consoles, most TVs, etc)
I like the USB stick idea, but honestly I would prefer if I could just get a video file when I buy a movie. Then put it on whatever storage device you want
USB sticks notoriously have spontaneous data loss. They're made of the cheapest available NAND and other components. And they can also hypothetically degrade over time if left unpowered, as they...
USB sticks notoriously have spontaneous data loss. They're made of the cheapest available NAND and other components. And they can also hypothetically degrade over time if left unpowered, as they basically work by trapping electrons in certain configurations...and electrons aren't 100% guaranteed to stay in the same place you put them for physics reasons.
We have a decent track record now on pressed laser media (not so much writable chemical ones). The majority of CDs my parents have from the 90s still play just fine. They're digital, after all, and the medium is fairly simple on a physical level.
I don’t think it’s possible to not have physical media without losing all ability to own the media you like. It doesn’t seem to work that way. Pirating may seem like an answer to the problem but...
I don’t think it’s possible to not have physical media without losing all ability to own the media you like. It doesn’t seem to work that way. Pirating may seem like an answer to the problem but it isn’t - and I’m not even speaking from a legality standpoint. Once physical production is gone, movies that don’t have a physical and/or streaming release that’s deemed popular enough by the community to rip will eventually disappear from existence.
Indeed, but from my recollection they were private invite and you had to be a decent seeder. Usenet has helped a lot in filling in a lot of missing title gaps. Still, I just had 8 DVDs arrive today :)
Indeed, but from my recollection they were private invite and you had to be a decent seeder. Usenet has helped a lot in filling in a lot of missing title gaps. Still, I just had 8 DVDs arrive today :)
I have bad news for you: it's not your decision. Oh, you "won't accept it"? Well, we are taking it away after you have paid. What are you going to do about it? Answer: the obvious thing, as you say.
the one thing I will not accept
I have bad news for you: it's not your decision. Oh, you "won't accept it"? Well, we are taking it away after you have paid. What are you going to do about it?
Can’t read the article, but I have transitioned towards more physical media recently. With streaming services being mostly terrible and expensive these days, it’s much easier to buy a DVD or...
Can’t read the article, but I have transitioned towards more physical media recently. With streaming services being mostly terrible and expensive these days, it’s much easier to buy a DVD or BluRay from my local used store, or rent new releases from the library. I have 0 interest in paying to “own” a digital file.
Where are you that there are still music shops? Apart from the specialist record shops which have always been there, I don't think there's a single music shop left in my city.. Vinyl isn't really...
Where are you that there are still music shops? Apart from the specialist record shops which have always been there, I don't think there's a single music shop left in my city..
Vinyl isn't really coming back. It's nothing compared to how it used to be. It is taking a higher percentage of the dwindling physical market but that's a very small segment of the overall music sales. Physical music sales are barely 10% of the market and consistently falling, albeit fairly slowly.
First three quarters of 2023 saw almost 4 million LPs sold, compared to 7 million CDs and 114 million streaming equivalent units over the same time period. source
This one. Unless it's in the big horrible mall which I avoid unless absolutely necessary, I probably know about it. The shopping part of the city is easily walkable and I regularly do. There are...
This one. Unless it's in the big horrible mall which I avoid unless absolutely necessary, I probably know about it. The shopping part of the city is easily walkable and I regularly do.
There are at least three dedicated vinyl record shops which have been here forever (this one is the best one and I kinda wish I still bought records so I could shop there), and there used to be at least another two back in the days when I was a DJ and spending all my money on the stuff. There are a couple of sheet music and music hardware shops too but mainstream high street music retailers, of which there were quite a few in the Olde Days, are all mostly gone now. The aforementioned shop in the big mall notwithstanding, but I suspect even they mostly survive selling t-shirts and video games.
I wonder if a small/rural place is almost more likely to have somewhere selling CDs because there's limited connectivity for streaming so physical media is more useful?
The Flea/Farmer’s Market I go to has no fewer than THREE vinyl guys. This is out of <50 vendors total. There’s about as much vintage vinyl on offer as handmade soap and essential oils.
The Flea/Farmer’s Market I go to has no fewer than THREE vinyl guys. This is out of <50 vendors total. There’s about as much vintage vinyl on offer as handmade soap and essential oils.
I just checked and it turns out we have an HMV in the city. It's just the big one which used to be smack in the middle of town has closed and the new one is a bit further away in the horrendous...
I just checked and it turns out we have an HMV in the city. It's just the big one which used to be smack in the middle of town has closed and the new one is a bit further away in the horrendous mall that I never go in, so I hadn't noticed!
We do have a couple of dedicated record shops but they were always only records. I am glad they still exist, even if I haven't bought any vinyl in 20 something years.
In the past, you had to own vinyl to listen to music, whereas now it's a choice to own. Saying "it's nothing compared how it used to be" in my opinion glosses over the significance of the fact...
In the past, you had to own vinyl to listen to music, whereas now it's a choice to own. Saying "it's nothing compared how it used to be" in my opinion glosses over the significance of the fact that people in 2024 are buying vinyl to begin with. Also I'm not so sure your info about CD sales being higher than LP sales is accurate
The info I linked to comes from the BPI who are the organisation who track music sales in the UK and run the UK Charts and so on. Numbers for other countries may, of course, differ. :) I do not...
The info I linked to comes from the BPI who are the organisation who track music sales in the UK and run the UK Charts and so on. Numbers for other countries may, of course, differ. :)
I do not understand why a few percent of music purchasers are buying vinyl but it is only a few percent. I don't think it's particularly significant.
In the last few years I've transitioned towards physical media as well. I'm buying more physical media than ever before. Most of what I own is completely unavailable on streaming or never got a...
In the last few years I've transitioned towards physical media as well. I'm buying more physical media than ever before. Most of what I own is completely unavailable on streaming or never got a release in the US market. There are so many films out there stuck in limbo due to distribution rights issues. The boutique market is booming right now despite general sales. Vinegar Syndrome, Radiance Films, Criterion, Kino Lorber, and Arrow Films are just some of the bigger distributors in the current market.
I'm also very lucky to have a video rental store in walking distance with an amazing collection. The act of physically walking through a curated store and making decisions on what to watch while I'm standing there has improved my home movie watching experience. Prior to that I found myself sitting on my couch endlessly scrolling through streaming options with decision paralysis.
It's unfortunate that the video store experience is now lost to most, but at least many libraries offer a lot of physical media to rent. You can even use streaming services like Kanopy and Hoopla to watch movies and shows through your local library.
All of the enshittification and pulling stuff from circulation on streaming services got me back into physical media. The difference in picture quality on a 4k BluRay vs "4k" streaming is so clear...
All of the enshittification and pulling stuff from circulation on streaming services got me back into physical media.
The difference in picture quality on a 4k BluRay vs "4k" streaming is so clear it's not even funny. I think Apple TV is the only one that has a decent bitrate, but it's still way behind actual media.
I mean, I'm shocked they've still been on shelves this long. They're only 480 lines of resolution, which looks like trash on a 4K TV. You need BluRay...
I mean, I'm shocked they've still been on shelves this long. They're only 480 lines of resolution, which looks like trash on a 4K TV. You need BluRay...
I think that by DVD they actually mean both DVD and Blu-Ray, given they talk about Blu-Ray releases later in the article. If your DVD looks bad on a modern TV you should probably invest in a good...
I think that by DVD they actually mean both DVD and Blu-Ray, given they talk about Blu-Ray releases later in the article.
If your DVD looks bad on a modern TV you should probably invest in a good scaler, or at least a player with a good scaler in it. It won't look as good as a blu-ray release but it shouldn't look like trash. The scaler in our TV was one of the main reasons why we chose to spend a bit more money for the Sony model instead of getting LG's offering.
The upscaler in the Panasonic 4k players is pretty good. I watch a lot of DVDs of movies made in the 1930s on a 65” OLED and of course, it’s not like watching a 4k disc but it can still be...
The upscaler in the Panasonic 4k players is pretty good. I watch a lot of DVDs of movies made in the 1930s on a 65” OLED and of course, it’s not like watching a 4k disc but it can still be perfectly watchable and doesn’t look wonky - aside from the print not being great to begin with.
I do wish that the movies weren’t on DVD and remastered onto Bluray or better but usually, a DVD is the only way to watch most of these movies legally or illegally. At times it feels like I’m creating a physical library of movies from every decade that once gone from DVD will be lost forever.
DVD still outsold both 4K and Bluray in 2023. We may think of high speed internet as ubiquitous, but there are still large segments of the population that don't have it at home, so streaming is...
DVD still outsold both 4K and Bluray in 2023.
We may think of high speed internet as ubiquitous, but there are still large segments of the population that don't have it at home, so streaming is not an option for them. Also, lots of old people who are content with their legacy television set ups and don't want to invest in a new one just to stream.
I wouldn’t mind owning more physical media, but it takes up a lot of space. Blu-rays and CDs are certainly more svelte than the VHS tapes, LaserDiscs, and vinyl records that came before them sure,...
I wouldn’t mind owning more physical media, but it takes up a lot of space. Blu-rays and CDs are certainly more svelte than the VHS tapes, LaserDiscs, and vinyl records that came before them sure, but they’re still large enough to make keeping a collection a nuisance.
Ripping to files can help with this, though one still technically has to keep possession of source media to be legal. The capacities required to make ripping movies and shows at archival quality practical necessitates bulky, heavy, fragile HDDs too… cheap massive SSDs can’t come soon enough.
There was once a company who made a brand of CD library organizers branded Discgear. They remain the best of their kind because they feature storage trays that are only about the same size of the...
There was once a company who made a brand of CD library organizers branded Discgear. They remain the best of their kind because they feature storage trays that are only about the same size of the discs themselves. The nicer models have a little tab you move over to a numbered line so that when you open the lid the corresponding disc would pop up alongside it. A whole bookcase of DVDs could be reduced to the size of a single shelf.
I kind of want to try designing a clone in CAD to try 3D printing it.
I would give up physical media in a heartbeat if there was an option to buy full quality DRM free movies and shows like I can with music. As of right now, blu-rays are still the only realistic way to get this. If physical media dies, I'll probably just switch to piracy. I'm not paying for a DRM-infested "digital copy" that can disappear overnight at the whim of some shitbrained executive.
What infuriates me is media that "disappear overnight" never to return. Poof, just deleted.
You get special legal privileges for publishing big enough art, you should have special legal responsibilities like actually preserving a copy (i.e. putting a reasonable effort into it at least) of it until copyright runs out and then sending this copy to a public archive.
Would also put somewhat of an incentive to not extend copyright into centuries.
That's it. The entire point of digital downloads, SAAS, subs etc (from a corporate perspective) is expressly that you DON'T own it. It is very clear that you have a licence that can be taken away at any point in time for whatever reason.
Regardless of the quality of digital ownership, it only exists in the ether at the behest of the gatekeepers. You are paying real money for a thing that cannot be owned.
I hadn't bought physical media in years but I bought a specific blu-ray off Amazon instead of buying or renting a digital copy. I finally sat down to watch it and the dammed thing kept on freezing at the same spot. I'm going to have to pirate a movie I own just to watch it.
I've never had blu-rays, only DVD's. Are they more fiddly or am I unlucky?
Unlucky. If it’s freezing at the same place it’s a defective disc, and you aught to have had it replaced.
By the time I got to watching it, it was months later so I just wasn't going to try returning/swapping it.
You're unlucky. I have a closet with nearly 400 Blu-Ray discs and I've had only a handful that failed to rip because of a manufacturing defect. Blu-Rays are actually exceptionally durable compared to CDs and DVDs.
Did you try cleaning the disc? I've had some discs come with traces of residue from the factory. They read fine after I cleaned them with warm soapy water and a microfiber cloth.
I only tried playing it on my Xbox since I don't have a blu-ray drive for the computer. I really should just get one and do a bunch of ripping and I wonder if its just the Xbox being a pain.
The issue could not be with the disc itself, but with the DRM implementation on the player. The Blu ray protection scheme has an option to force a player to update. This is used when there are keys found or decrypted. When you insert a new disc it will contain an instruction to invalidate the leaked keys and take the next one from the list. (My memory is a bit hazy on the details, I took a deep dive in this a couple of years ago.)
What could happen, and what I strongly suspect happened to me, is that this update mechanism can be buggy and then the old key gets invalided, but the new ones are not properly installed/downloaded (again, hazy) and then you can have discs that don't play well anymore.
I had two players (to circumvent the idiot region encoding) and it happened on both of them:
The nasty thing is that it does not outright refuse to play, instead the image is distorted just enough to make it unwatchable.
The Arch wiki has more information: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Blu-ray#How_it_works
Anyway, after ruining my two players I bought a copy of MakeMKV and now I just rip every disc I get.
Physical media should not be abandoned. Though streaming may be convenient, the risk of censorship is also great in this online only future.
If you subscribe to Disney+, you have access to every single episode of The Simpsons ever created...except for an episode in season 3 where Michael Jackson voiced one of the characters, which was pulled from the service when his child abuse allegations began to gain more weight posthumously. It ain't the greatest episode of The Simpsons, but it should be available for people to watch if they wish to. But Disney won't put it on its service for fear of tarnishing their "brand".
Disney also owns the 20th Century Fox catalogue now. Classic films like The French Connection have had dialogue containing the N-word censored in them (which, considering The French Connection is a gritty, early 70's New York crime drama, fits the story).
Sure, maybe you can forgo those two instances and think we haven't lost anything culturally. But think of the future. Censorship is not a line you cross, but rather a line that crosses you. The streaming video only future increasingly makes that a line that will become more and more restrictive as the years go on. Our backwards ways should be on full display to our children. We shouldn't be able to hide it through digital censorship.
For the most part I don't mind physical media going away anymore.
The one thing I will not accept is the attempt to prevent me from owning the media I like.
If you take away all means I can reasonably own the media I want, I will take the unreasonable means of owning it. Sure, that means that you don't get paid anymore, but if you wanted to be paid you would offer me the thing that I want.
I will, however, miss Criterion Collection releases with their cool art, pack-ins, and extras.
Criterion and other boutique labels will probably remain for a while. Physical media as a whole will continue to get more collector based rather than how it used to be for mass consumers.
Oh, I figured as much. But on the other hand if the bigger guys pull out that means that the companies that press the discs and manufacture the players will start to go out of business, and from there prices will start to soar.
The players will but I think the discs are pretty trivially cheap. Even if they go up by 100% I’m not sure it’ll make a huge difference.
Fully custom blu-ray production can be done for about $4 per disc for a lot of 1,000 units.
Add some additional money for packaging and distribution and that basically means . It’s the licensing that costs all the money. At that price point I feel like a machine to do custom pressings should be accessibly priced for a neighborhood bookstore or a hobby shop if they can clear enough business in custom orders.
There’s a decent amount of work (and money) that goes into the design and menus and everything too, which you lose out on at lower scales. But that also doesn’t have to be ruinous.
Good players being expensive is unfortunate, but it’s also a one time expense for a BIFL quality product. A budget level HiFi CD Transport will start at $400, which is a lot, but not really ruinous if it’s a hobby of yours.
I'm actually not super worried about players. Blu-ray being 100% digital means that quality players doesn't really matter so much, and there's a pretty huge market for used equipment considering that several generations of games consoles support them.
I've kinda wondered why they haven't just moved to something quasi digital? A usb stick with a top level quality copy of the media designed to just work on any machine?
What's the benefit over a disc? It's a big jump in manufacturing price, when write speeds doesn't matter.
Disc's get scratched and can only be played on specific hardware.
A USB stick doesn't get scratched and could be played on a lot more devices (computers, consoles, most TVs, etc)
I like the USB stick idea, but honestly I would prefer if I could just get a video file when I buy a movie. Then put it on whatever storage device you want
USB sticks notoriously have spontaneous data loss. They're made of the cheapest available NAND and other components. And they can also hypothetically degrade over time if left unpowered, as they basically work by trapping electrons in certain configurations...and electrons aren't 100% guaranteed to stay in the same place you put them for physics reasons.
We have a decent track record now on pressed laser media (not so much writable chemical ones). The majority of CDs my parents have from the 90s still play just fine. They're digital, after all, and the medium is fairly simple on a physical level.
Even worse, the ones you know are staying put could be located anywhere in the universe!
If I had kept all of the memory cards and sticks that have failed on me over the years it could easily overflow an oversized coffee mug.
I don’t think it’s possible to not have physical media without losing all ability to own the media you like. It doesn’t seem to work that way. Pirating may seem like an answer to the problem but it isn’t - and I’m not even speaking from a legality standpoint. Once physical production is gone, movies that don’t have a physical and/or streaming release that’s deemed popular enough by the community to rip will eventually disappear from existence.
There are piracy sites specifically dedicated to obscure media.
Indeed, but from my recollection they were private invite and you had to be a decent seeder. Usenet has helped a lot in filling in a lot of missing title gaps. Still, I just had 8 DVDs arrive today :)
I have bad news for you: it's not your decision. Oh, you "won't accept it"? Well, we are taking it away after you have paid. What are you going to do about it?
Answer: the obvious thing, as you say.
Can’t read the article, but I have transitioned towards more physical media recently. With streaming services being mostly terrible and expensive these days, it’s much easier to buy a DVD or BluRay from my local used store, or rent new releases from the library. I have 0 interest in paying to “own” a digital file.
Where are you that there are still music shops? Apart from the specialist record shops which have always been there, I don't think there's a single music shop left in my city..
Vinyl isn't really coming back. It's nothing compared to how it used to be. It is taking a higher percentage of the dwindling physical market but that's a very small segment of the overall music sales. Physical music sales are barely 10% of the market and consistently falling, albeit fairly slowly.
First three quarters of 2023 saw almost 4 million LPs sold, compared to 7 million CDs and 114 million streaming equivalent units over the same time period. source
This one. Unless it's in the big horrible mall which I avoid unless absolutely necessary, I probably know about it. The shopping part of the city is easily walkable and I regularly do.
There are at least three dedicated vinyl record shops which have been here forever (this one is the best one and I kinda wish I still bought records so I could shop there), and there used to be at least another two back in the days when I was a DJ and spending all my money on the stuff. There are a couple of sheet music and music hardware shops too but mainstream high street music retailers, of which there were quite a few in the Olde Days, are all mostly gone now. The aforementioned shop in the big mall notwithstanding, but I suspect even they mostly survive selling t-shirts and video games.
I wonder if a small/rural place is almost more likely to have somewhere selling CDs because there's limited connectivity for streaming so physical media is more useful?
The Flea/Farmer’s Market I go to has no fewer than THREE vinyl guys. This is out of <50 vendors total. There’s about as much vintage vinyl on offer as handmade soap and essential oils.
I just checked and it turns out we have an HMV in the city. It's just the big one which used to be smack in the middle of town has closed and the new one is a bit further away in the horrendous mall that I never go in, so I hadn't noticed!
We do have a couple of dedicated record shops but they were always only records. I am glad they still exist, even if I haven't bought any vinyl in 20 something years.
In the past, you had to own vinyl to listen to music, whereas now it's a choice to own. Saying "it's nothing compared how it used to be" in my opinion glosses over the significance of the fact that people in 2024 are buying vinyl to begin with. Also I'm not so sure your info about CD sales being higher than LP sales is accurate
The info I linked to comes from the BPI who are the organisation who track music sales in the UK and run the UK Charts and so on. Numbers for other countries may, of course, differ. :)
I do not understand why a few percent of music purchasers are buying vinyl but it is only a few percent. I don't think it's particularly significant.
In the last few years I've transitioned towards physical media as well. I'm buying more physical media than ever before. Most of what I own is completely unavailable on streaming or never got a release in the US market. There are so many films out there stuck in limbo due to distribution rights issues. The boutique market is booming right now despite general sales. Vinegar Syndrome, Radiance Films, Criterion, Kino Lorber, and Arrow Films are just some of the bigger distributors in the current market.
I'm also very lucky to have a video rental store in walking distance with an amazing collection. The act of physically walking through a curated store and making decisions on what to watch while I'm standing there has improved my home movie watching experience. Prior to that I found myself sitting on my couch endlessly scrolling through streaming options with decision paralysis.
It's unfortunate that the video store experience is now lost to most, but at least many libraries offer a lot of physical media to rent. You can even use streaming services like Kanopy and Hoopla to watch movies and shows through your local library.
All of the enshittification and pulling stuff from circulation on streaming services got me back into physical media.
The difference in picture quality on a 4k BluRay vs "4k" streaming is so clear it's not even funny. I think Apple TV is the only one that has a decent bitrate, but it's still way behind actual media.
I mean, I'm shocked they've still been on shelves this long. They're only 480 lines of resolution, which looks like trash on a 4K TV. You need BluRay...
I think that by DVD they actually mean both DVD and Blu-Ray, given they talk about Blu-Ray releases later in the article.
If your DVD looks bad on a modern TV you should probably invest in a good scaler, or at least a player with a good scaler in it. It won't look as good as a blu-ray release but it shouldn't look like trash. The scaler in our TV was one of the main reasons why we chose to spend a bit more money for the Sony model instead of getting LG's offering.
The upscaler in the Panasonic 4k players is pretty good. I watch a lot of DVDs of movies made in the 1930s on a 65” OLED and of course, it’s not like watching a 4k disc but it can still be perfectly watchable and doesn’t look wonky - aside from the print not being great to begin with.
I do wish that the movies weren’t on DVD and remastered onto Bluray or better but usually, a DVD is the only way to watch most of these movies legally or illegally. At times it feels like I’m creating a physical library of movies from every decade that once gone from DVD will be lost forever.
DVD still outsold both 4K and Bluray in 2023.
We may think of high speed internet as ubiquitous, but there are still large segments of the population that don't have it at home, so streaming is not an option for them. Also, lots of old people who are content with their legacy television set ups and don't want to invest in a new one just to stream.
I wouldn’t mind owning more physical media, but it takes up a lot of space. Blu-rays and CDs are certainly more svelte than the VHS tapes, LaserDiscs, and vinyl records that came before them sure, but they’re still large enough to make keeping a collection a nuisance.
Ripping to files can help with this, though one still technically has to keep possession of source media to be legal. The capacities required to make ripping movies and shows at archival quality practical necessitates bulky, heavy, fragile HDDs too… cheap massive SSDs can’t come soon enough.
There was once a company who made a brand of CD library organizers branded Discgear. They remain the best of their kind because they feature storage trays that are only about the same size of the discs themselves. The nicer models have a little tab you move over to a numbered line so that when you open the lid the corresponding disc would pop up alongside it. A whole bookcase of DVDs could be reduced to the size of a single shelf.
I kind of want to try designing a clone in CAD to try 3D printing it.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/UIcJT