Written by Matthew Whitaker

These days a lot of us recognize the pitfalls of consuming all our media through streaming. We feel little attachment to our music and are at the whim of algorithms for each song. The price of the three video streaming services you forgot you subscribed to already went up by the time you finished reading this sentence – and they just removed 25% of their library. Video games? Sony’s servers were down for 24 hours in February and players couldn’t access their digital games.

These are all annoyances, but the bigger problem with digital media consumption is that you do not own your media; you are at the mercy of the content provider when it comes to access and content integrity.

The terms and conditions that content providers require you to accept give them complete power over your interactions with their digital content; they have the ability to remove content and cancel your access without a refund.

Three examples…

One:  I was looking to stream an album by a punk rock band on Pandora. I used to stream it all the time, but now that particular album was nowhere to be found. Where had it gone? Pandora removed it.

Two:  Video content produced by Discovery that was purchased on the PlayStation Store was removed from users’ libraries with no refund because Sony changed its licensing agreements.

Three:  This one is very personal. Yahoo deleted all my emails with no warning, including emails from my late grandmother, because I hadn’t logged in for a few years.

The takeaway here is that with digital media, you own nothing.

Fortunately, there’s a solution to this dystopian disaster: Physical media.

Many thought that physical media was a relic of a bygone pre-internet era. Turns out this line of thinking was wrong. Sales of physical media – music, movies, video games – are on the rise. Physical media offers a plethora of benefits that all stem from owning an unchangeable item that you can hold in your hands.

The most important benefit is that it can never be taken away from you. You have total control over what happens to it. Want to lend it to a friend? No problem! Looking to sell it for some cash? It’s yours, so you set the price!

Another benefit is that it can’t be changed, so it’s incredibly important for media preservation. Streaming services have been caught modifying or censoring legacy content, which does not sit right with preservationists and doesn’t respect the original creator’s intentions and the context in which that work-in-question was created. Your physical media will play the same from the first time you access it to the 1000th time.

Some benefits aren’t as apparent as the first two.

One is that physical media can offer higher-quality playback of media than streaming. Music listened to on a CD as well as a movie watched on a 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray do not suffer from digital compression, and they sound and look better than streaming counterparts. Physical video games do not have to worry about digital storage space, as most necessary data is held on the disc or cartridge in many cases.

The other (and my favorite) benefit of owning physical media is the attachment you feel to it compared to accessing content digitally. You have something to hold in your hands that is completely yours; you get to see your own curated collection filling the shelf. With a physical copy of a music album, you get to see more of the artist’s intentions, like the art chosen for the cover and interior as well as the unique design of the disc. A favorite of mine is Goldfinger’s album Hang-Ups which is themed around landline telephones and features a phone rotary as the disc design. There is so much fulfillment in building a collection that represents you…and the best part is that the collection is yours forever.

Digital media is incredibly convenient, but its shortcomings grow more apparent every day. The lack of true ownership allows content providers to take away or modify digital items any time they choose – content users have paid for. Though less convenient, Physical media returns ownership to users and gives them complete control over how it is handled and experienced. Improved technical performance and a sense of attachment are other benefits. While digital media has its place, physical media is something truly special: physical media is forever.