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Evolution of Media Ownership
Sep. 5th, 2010 12:26 pmI seem to be witnessing an evolution in media ownership. When I was a kid, everyone had records, cassette tapes and eight-track tapes. This was a big improvement over having to own the actual orchestra or having to wait for the bard to make it to your town.
Then we switched to CDs (and cassette tapes).
Now some people just record their CDs and then get rid of the actual disks.
Other people, mostly younger than me, just buy songs (such as from i-Tunes) or steal them and never own hard copies.
Other people don't even try to own songs, they just rent them using services like Pandora. This is good when you only like hearing new things. And these services get good at figuring out what kinds of new things you like to hear.
Using libraries for books and Netflix for movies is comparable. These days, it's getting awfully easy to access all kinds of wonderful media without having to actually use up space in your house.
Then we switched to CDs (and cassette tapes).
Now some people just record their CDs and then get rid of the actual disks.
Other people, mostly younger than me, just buy songs (such as from i-Tunes) or steal them and never own hard copies.
Other people don't even try to own songs, they just rent them using services like Pandora. This is good when you only like hearing new things. And these services get good at figuring out what kinds of new things you like to hear.
Using libraries for books and Netflix for movies is comparable. These days, it's getting awfully easy to access all kinds of wonderful media without having to actually use up space in your house.