The first music purchase I ever bought with my own money was embarrassingly, a CD by German cheesy techno act Scooter. I was 12 and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Luckily, my brief flirtation with creatively-castrated euro-techno ended shortly afterwards when I became obsessed with the Beastie Boys back catalogue and that kicked off my musical collection properly.
If you’re like me, you have shelves of CDs and DVDs in your house which you’ve been adding to regularly over the years. Recently, I’ve been finding this vast library of music and movies to be redundant thanks to our increasingly on-demand world.
Last weekend, I wandered into a local HMV and spent 30 minutes surveying the aisles of CDs and DVDs. A few years ago, I would have snapped up something to bring home with me but these days all I see on the shelves is plastic stuff. Cheap, finite, locked-in ugly formats which I have no desire to own anymore.
I now buy music through eMusic and iTunes digitally while satisfying my craving for ownership of a physical product by purchasing big beautiful vinyl albums in Dublin record shops like Road Records and Tower Records, which often come with download codes. I’m not alone. A recent report indicates that vinyl sales rose 5% last year worldwide and digital sales make up 30% of all music purchases.
Lately though, the concept of owning entertainment has become less of a desire and you can blame, yes, you guessed it – the internet. Legal services like Spotify, Youtube, Netflix - the on-demand US movie streaming service are making vast libraries of CDs and DVDs in homes feel a bit primitive and dusty. Now, If you want to listen to a Pixies’ first album Surfer Rosa, you open Spotify (18% owned by major labels). If you want to watch a film or catch up on a TV show, you download it via a Torrent or Rapidshare etc. Be it right or wrong, this is how people are consuming media.
In our always-on world, we will increasingly demand things instantly and physical formats will lose out as will content owners, which explains why IRMA’s plan to warn 50 illegal downloaders a week on Eircom’s internet service started last month.
It is a futile fight. The entertainment industry cannot currently provide us with the services we crave as they too busy protecting their current revenues so they threaten us – their customers even when we do the right thing. Buy a DVD to watch and you get up to 10 minutes of unskippable piracy warnings and trailers before the main feature. A nice way to reward the buyer.
What will it take for a shift towards innovation and new services? As internet connections improve, as 3G networks propagate, we can potentially have access to the entire world of entertainment in our pocket. Even dodgy Scooter albums.
Features
Fri, Jun 4, 2010