Report Blog Entry
There is a very high probability that you - yes, you - don't own the majority of your purchased media right now.
The digital age has given small and up and coming artists, musicians, filmmakers, game developers, and all-in-all, creators the ability to monetize and spread their products and creations near and far by means of digital distribution. "Digital distribution" herein is defined as purely digital distribution - where no physical releases exist, and you have to go to an online only marketplace to purchase and then download whatever it is you've just bought.
For the common man this is fine - but the same method of distribution that has allowed thousands upon of thousands of small time creators to get out of the hood has also allowed for large corporations to greatly line their pockets in the worst way possible.
You see, the large companies - the "media" as they're often referred to - aren't actually the people who make the shows, the games, the music, the art, any of it - they're primarily just the people who throw money around, distribute the product, advertise it, and reap the lion's share of the profits.
In moving to digital only distribution methods, these large corporations have cut out so many middle men that they have seen record high profits like never before - and what's more they've created a market in which they can manufacture scarcity at the flip of a switch, lemme elaborate.
For example, digital only distribution of shows and movies happens via streaming services. A streaming service, think Hulu or Netflix, is where you pay a fee every month for access to a bunch of shows and movies that you can watch whenever you want as long as you have an Internet connection - the streaming services - for a long time - weren't actually ran by the companies that produced the shows and movies (they're starting to catch up now, that's why every major media group launched a streaming service roughly three years ago), so the streaming companies would pay a fee for a license to run the show on their application. I remember coming home from school when I was 11 and turning on the Wii, flipping to Netflix (it was like $8 a month back then btw) and watching South Park for weeks at a time - only to come home one day and realize that it was gone. Netflix had lost the license - so they couldn't air it anymore.
Just like that, I had no access to the show that I liked watching the most out of any of the other shit on the app, so I had to find something else to watch.
Now you just gotta put two and two together.
The "media" - the people who produce and distribute shows and movies have made the leap and opened their own streaming service shitholes - since everyone uses them, they just stop making physical releases, because of that the only way to watch these shows and movies (some of which you may have grown up with) is to either shell out an expensive fee to watch on average one or two shows and movies - or you have to be a man, become a criminal, and pirate that shit (there is a concerning amount of people who don't know how to do this in the modern age).
Something else I'll touch on briefly is "fake physical" - it's big for video game companies these days. You ever went to a store and bought a AAA game in the last five years? You get home, you open the case, you pop that bad boy in - and it's an offline demo, with no multiplayer, and you gotta spend three days downloading a 150gb update, day one.
"Fake physical" is when the company gives you a disc with a code on it that gives you a license to the game, and nothing else - there is jack shit on that disc and they produce fuck tons of them before the game is even done because it helps them ship sooner rather than later.
And what happens if the storefronts go down and you can't redeem your license again? You're fucked. That's upwards of $60 down the drain that you could've enjoyed for like a couple of years max - whereas games from 23 fucking years ago still run fine with no hiccups on my Gamecube (and the guide's got a cool Napster advertisement in it).
I've always liked being able to look up on my shelf and see my collection of movies, blu-rays, and tapes - because those are mine and no one can take them from me - but in a world where media distribution is almost entirely digital, all it takes is one guy thinking they need to free up server space for your favorite show, movie, album, etc. to disappear - maybe forever.
Mark my words, there will be shows that premiered on streaming services that become lost media sometime in the next few years - if that hasn't already happened.
Download all of your shit, and find a way of backing it up. Get a DVD burner and put it on a disc, get an HDMI to RCA converter and two sets of cables and put that shit on a VHS, hell go get a Super 8 camera and point that shit straight at your TV, whatever you gotta do - do it.
Back up your shit, or you run the risk of losing it down the line.
Digital Only Distribution and Why It Sucks
3 Kudos
Comments
Displaying 1 of 1 comments ( View all | Add Comment )
amongusangels
agreed 100%
its surprisingly hard to get physical media for cheap where i live so i resort to downloading anything i can and saving it onto a 1TB external hard drive
you already talked about why streaming services suck shit but games with digital-only releases have bothered me for a while too. specifically because most games nowadays get released on steam. so what happens if steam implodes? what happens if, for whatever reason, you cant use steam anymore? any games you had on there are instantly impossible to play
if the internet suddenly disappeared like 70% of all media from the past 2 decades would just be gone. library of alexandria type shit lmao
No, it would make the Library of Alexandria look like a fucking joke - I'm talking it would be full blown digital dark ages.
A lot of people mistake the dark ages as being a time in which technological progress stalled and slowed for like 500 years because of certain governments and institutions - what it actually is, is a time period in which we have incredibly few historical sources telling us what was going on because so many major empires collapsed all at once and sent their civilians, colonies, and what was left of their empires into a death spiral that launched them back to the caveman times.
Straight up, dead to rights, Internet goes of tomorrow and stays off for six months you'd see shit you'd never expect to see - people flooding into movie theaters and Drive In's to watch whatever old ass film the guy running the joint could dust off in the back, you'd see arcades make a major comeback with kids lining up to 1v1 on an old copy of Black Ops 2 that some guy had sitting around, and you'd see porno addicts walking away from every news stand in big cities carrying a stack of magazines wrapped in black trashbags (just like the good old days).
Shit would be crazy, and so much of the last decade would just not exist anymore - especially all the shit on Youtube, Soundcloud, Spotify, Tumblr, Instagram, Deviantart, etc. etc. etc.
by Seth; ; Report
you brought up a really interesting hypothetical. makes you think just how much the internet going down would affect the world because it goes way further than just not having access to movies or games. it would remove access to social media, video sharing websites and something that i really wonder the effect of: AI programs
most importantly though it would remove access to search engines. search engines have been around for decades and i think at this point people have really started taking them for granted. suddenly not having the ability to find out anything just by typing it into google would affect people a lot more than i think they realise. maybe if search engines went down the rate of literacy/higher education would go up?
by amongusangels; ; Report
It would probably cause the amount of random information - that's generalized info - among the common populace to dip drastically, while at the same time I think that the people who pursue specified information would devote more time to that information, saving it, spreading it manually, etc. - so scholars would devote themselves to their work better but the common man would know less.
School would probably be much easier for kids, less distractions - less new and late breaking changes to the curriculum, etc. - that doesn't mean they'd learn more though, they'd just go through the motions the same way kids did 30 years ago.
by Seth; ; Report
between jobs, education, entertainment and just general knowledge i think the internet disappearing would have an INSANE (and probably irreversible) effect on the world. not very likely that it would happen but with the rate that things have been getting completely turned on their heads in the world right now something similar might happen anyway lol
by amongusangels; ; Report
I think the power grids going down for a sustained (months long) period is more likely than the Internet going down and staying down. Power goes off, people get crazy, panic, chaos, riots ensue - whole nine yards - but once it comes back on they can just plug back in and business as usual online continues.
I would like to see a lot of people "log off" en masse though - I'd like to see the generational implications of that and what it would lead to - personally I think it would do a lot of people a lot of good.
by Seth; ; Report
i agree. i just dont think just "logging off" is really on option nowadays though with how reliant we are on the internet (unfortunately)
by amongusangels; ; Report
I have tried and failed and tried and failed to run from the Internet on many occasions. I'm starting to think this World Wide Web stuff isn't just a passing fad.
I have an idea for a blog / essay that I intend to write sometime soon outlining what I feel like would be a good compromise for people like me - a separate Internet which completely refuses to interact with any of the spillover from the pre-established Internet that we see nowadays. I think that would help to cut down on online addiction, the clash of cultures and groups, and the unnecessary stresses that we find ourselves faced with daily.
That - or just say fuck it, go straight up Modern Day Amish, and refuse to use any tech made past 2006.
Both are good in my mind.
by Seth; ; Report