meirl

This is all true but I’d like to also point out that 20 years ago I could pay 16.99 for a Creed CD and OWN it. That ownership entitled me to sell it but The chances of me selling it were slim. Meanwhile now I can pay 12.99/month for unlimited access to every CD I could imagine and listen to them just as hard as I could that old CD. I can’t break it, I can’t lose it. Maybe in other sectors this is a worse problem but in music I feel it’s been great (not for the artists necessarily).

Fun fact: Physical CDs are cheap on Ebay and even cheaper if you have a record store. We have a huge record store and most CDs and DVDs are 2-5$ a piece with sales. Some of the more popular titles are more expensive but the vast majority are dirt cheap.

An unfortunate reality

I still own still buy blu-rays and music on vinyl and CD. Ownership is better than streaming. You own it you have control over when you can watch or listen to the thing. Streaming is determined by the company as to whether that thing is available, because one day it may be gone.

It’s fine. I don’t have any fucking room for all of the things I lease anyways.

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

What an uninformed and strawman take. The “Service” does a lot more lifting than what the commenter gives credit to. You can still buy and own the things he is referring to. Why don’t we? Because no one wants to pay $18 for a CD with 2 good songs on it, or $30 for a DVD that sits on a shelf, or $140 for software that never gets updated.

I would rather pay $10/month for all of the music I could ever want, $3.99 to rent something on demand I can enjoy, or $20/month for software that is constantly getting better. The “Service” creates more value than the depreciating product that is sitting on a shelf doing nothing for me.

If it’s something you truly value, buy it. Love that album from your 20s that you can’t imagine having without? Buy it and own it. Same goes for anything else you truly value.

You can still buy everything. It stopped working. Renting is more convenient, but if you want, you can still buy things.

A rental economy for most things actually makes more sense. So often we buy something and then it sits most of the time just gradually depreciating in value. A rental economy maximizes utility and when we rent and use an item it is theoretically well maintained and updated. Even in a theoretical situation where it is not, the consumer just goes somewhere else. 

Subscription models took over because they offered a more convenient solution to begin with. It was good for a time but now that they have a monopoly they’re really trying to press the advantage home by watering down the benefits and repackaging into more expensive/less consumer friendly options. It’s even bled into parts of the world like car ownership. Why own when you can purchase a novated lease for 5 years and do it all again at the end of the lease? (personally I tend towards buying older used cars with better design lives and more DIY friendliness but I digress).

Prime and netflix are perfect examples of this. Library getting more limited, ads with paid services and paying a subscription fee only to then still need to pay to view some shows are relatively recent phenomena in that regard. For prime too, you used to get a 100% ad free experience on twitch, only for that to be repackaged in a separate subscription under twitch turbo (and an aggressive arms race against ad blockers to boot).

I take solace in the slim hope that this will be the undoing of such services, and consumer friendliness will once again take priority as they hemmhorage money to pirating and other better options.

Bruh you can still own shit, it’s just that companies made it more accessible for younger and broke ppl like me to have those things while at the same time improving their business model to maximize profit. To me it is a win-win scenario

Thank God for P2P connections, amirite??

Just got a box set of DVDs. You don’t HAVE to pay for services and CAN own, a lot of people CHOOSE to pay for services because they’re convenient.

Buy ammo

At least with books you always own them, you buy them, you read them and then you can lend it to a friend or just have them looking nice on a shelf, this is one more reason I don’t like E-books even if they’re usually cheaper.

It used to be the same with CDs, I remember going to a friend’s house and he had a huge collection of movies, even if it’s less convenient when you’re actually looking for things I love how physical media looks.

While on the subject of physical media, photo albums are also cool, it’s just not the same thing scrolling through a phone or a folder on your PC, it’s always cool flipping through photo albums with my parents. It’s kind of weird how we take more pictures than ever but we probably print way fewer unless it’s for important events like weddings.

renter economy is here to stay and will be more prevalent in the future, youll own nothing and be happy 🙂