| I don't buy the strange fascination with owning physical things. The other side of this is something no one speaks about: Spotify, youtube made it possible for me to listen to _any_ music from anywhere. This kind of profound open access to art should not just be dismissed. The concerns about price increase are laughable because without spotify I wouldn't be exposed to this music in the first place. I think the obsession with owning it physically is because of many reasons 1. a sense of identity forms when the access to own things has barrier - a whole niche/hobby forms with owning vinyl that is separate from the art itself 2. there is a sense of loss of agency when the art you like is taken away from you - this unpredictability is one of the few reasons I agree with the article 3. subscription services allow normies access to all the same art that you might have had access and dilutes your own identity 4. owning tangible things is just nicer - there's no better way to put it Overall there's a tradeoff that subscription services give vs what they take away. I'm not very obsessed with art enough that I need to purchase them physically. Personally, youtube is all I need. |
If you grew up in any past era where owning a physical 'thing' was the default, you naturally feel the inherent lack of ownership in a digital version of that same thing.
If you grow up in a time of mega platforms that can give you almost all of a certain media type for a subscription fee, the idea of lining up at midnight to pay 3x that fee for one plastic disc from one artist/publisher must sound insane and suboptimal.
It was a good time though.