With more and more consumers cutting the cord, it may seem like streaming is the way of the future. However, the past few years have seen a rise in consumer demand for more physical media. Despite moves by companies like Rockstar Games to reduce physical media output and move to streaming only, people are fighting back with their wallets.
Here are just a few reasons why physical media is superior to streaming.
1. Better Quality
Streaming media will always be compressed to some degree. But with a good quality physical copy, you have superior sound and visuals. Even bad film transfers still look better on DVD and Blu-Ray than they do via streaming.
2. Artwork & Booklets
With streaming, the creator often has to sell their entire project off a thumbnail. This leads to using simpler, stripped-down posters since those are often easier to read when scaled down. Otherwise, they risk their book/movie/album looking like a muddled mess that most audiences can’t be bothered to click on.
DVDs and books can sport cooler, more intricate covers because they aren’t trying to fit the image in a 600×600 pixel space. While not everyone loves them, CDs still come with booklets that contain things like liner notes, cover art, and even sometimes lyrics.
3. Ad-Free (Well, Almost)
Even paid streaming services are starting to sneak in ads, at least at the beginning of your content. But listening to a CD is ad-free. Most books don’t have ads in them. Movies and TV on physical media keep ads relegated to the beginning, with several allowing you to skip them altogether. Streaming movies for free on an ad-supported service is nice, but the constant interruptions are a big reason people ditched cable television in the first place.
4. Physical Media is Available Offline
If your internet goes out, it’s no big deal. Listen to a CD, watch a movie or TV show on DVD/Blu-ray, or read a paper book. All WiFi-free activities.
5. No Subscription Fees
Many streaming platforms charge a monthly or annual fee for access to content. Some let you download books/movies/albums to your device to use offline. However, your access to that media is revoked when you stop paying the subscription fee. With physical media, unless you destroy it, it’s yours to access forever, and you only have to pay for it once.
Unless it’s a video game and you want more DLC, but that’s more in line with what we’re going to talk about below:
6. Bonus Content
While some streamers are starting to add bonus content, many still just host the movie or show. DVDs and Blu-rays still often have wonderful bonus features like behind-the-scenes content, interviews, and commentary. These extras can give a wealth of knowledge to a project. We even did an article about Snakes on a Plane’s marketing that was discovered via an extra on the DVD that doesn’t seem to be available digitally. Which brings us to our next point:
7. You Really Own It
As discussed above, subscription-only models are being pushed on consumers who just want to own the items they purchased. The trouble is not every license agreement lasts forever; in fact, most don’t. Once a streamer loses the rights, even if you paid them for that specific piece of media, it’s gone.
This also makes physical media imperative in the battle against censorship. Even though physical media can, without question, still be censored, it’s much harder to do so. Since each new censored version of the book/album/movie/episode) would have to be recut then repressed. And since most major releases have big releases, this could mean needing to make thousands to millions of new editions to alter the work. Whereas streaming just has to swap out a file for a new version and its auto delivered to consumers.
Making physical media an ally in the fight for art preservation as well. It’s much harder to take a physical copy of a piece of art out of someone’s home than it is just to revoke access digitally.
This is why so many people are telling companies to stop doing digital-only releases and at least give consumers the option of a physical copy. Art, weather its written, auditory, or visual, needs to be preserved and allowed to exist in an unmangled state. Physical media is currently the best hope we have of ensuring that.
