On June 1st 1999, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker created Napster. Napster was a free peer to peer audio file sharing application. It allowed easy access to any and all music from just the click of a button. This was revolutionary, the days of going out and actually going to stores and buying music was over. People could sit back in their house and be able to stream anything. But this new technology did not sit well with huge media conglomerates. Record labels nor artists were making money from Napster. So, the Recording Industry Association of America sued Napster on accounts of copyright infringement for $20 billion. Napster eventually lost the lawsuit which caused them to shut down on September 3rd 2002. Even though Napster was gone forever, it was the Catalyst for the digital media revolution. Modern day streaming services were born off Napster.
Now, in 2025, think to yourself when was the last time you went out to go buy a DVD, a record, a CD, etc. But, you probably have Netflix, Spotify, Apple Music subscription or one of the countless other streaming services that have terrible UIs (looking at you Hulu). You don’t even have to buy real videogames now since there’s Steam and the Xbox/PlayStation stores.
Thus, creating the importance of physical media. When you’re relying on streaming services you’re at the mercy of them removing your favorite movies and Tv shows. Yet, owning your favorite media can allow you to keep and cherish it forever. By keeping your own media you can share, trade, and borrow with friends and family, creating greater diffusion of said media.
Not only does owning physical media allow greater diffusion of said media, it provides for a better experience. Physical media has better quality, with many movie teams putting extra care into the Blu-ray and DVD releases. Blu-ray comes in 4K discs that have a plethora of data they can hold, which allows for a much higher bitrate and, hence, higher-quality picture and audio than a typical compressed stream. When buying physical media extra bonus material comes like posters in records and in Blu-rays deleted scenes, documentaries, behind the scenes looks, short episodes, audio commentary, bloopers, interviews, etc.
Owning physical media naturally creates collecting. Owning the original release of art creates a vastly different connection with the art which streaming services can never provide. On top of this, Collecting creates bonds and friendships with like minded people. Collecting is also good for mental health, because as Utah State University states that, regulatory participation in a meaningful hobby can help reduce anxiety and depression.
Most importantly, owning physical media helps the artists. Some streaming services do not pay artists well. The average payout per stream is in the neighborhood of 0.4 cents – yes, listening to a song 100 times grosses an artist a whopping 40 cents. Meaning only well known, big artists are profiting. Causing indie artists economic instability since they don’t have a huge fan base to produce streams. And the little money made from streaming doesn’t directly go to the artist, it first goes through record labels and publishers. Whilst smaller artists thrive off of selling CDs and records which can equate to a couple thousand streams. Creating larger gain for the artists which can use that money to invest into bigger and better projects.
In the end, we shouldn’t completely right off streaming and digital media since it does easily allow us to access the huge variety of art which wasn’t possible 25 years ago. But, we should be mindful of the harms and negatives it creates for the artist. So if you have a few extra bucks laying around go buy a CD, go buy a DVD, and go buy a record because you won’t regret it.
