If you don't hold it, you don't own it. Unless you take the DVD from them, you can't remove their access to the movie stored on that disc.

Yeah because i want to own when i buy things

People! Try Yt-dlp, when spotify decide to make Spotify Developer available again, then yt-dlp plugin integration with spotify, still, in anna's archive i think they will make available if not already the hundreds of TBs of metadata and songs managed to get from Spotify so media preservation and ownership will also be in the digital space

I prefer dedicated digital players over physical media, for instance, a FLAC player with a digital library over CDs, but I'm glad to see this trend catching up. Anything that gets people building their own collections, escaping algorithms and escaping DRM/streaming is a huge win in my book.

A decent music library would require thousands of CDs, it would be a huge hassle. Why deal with that when you can just copy all of that to one hard drive?

I'm curious as to why?

Physical media scratches, rots, burns down, etc. They also require a lot of space, and you can't have it all with you easily.

My FLAC library is got the same or better audio quality, I can backup and copy in seconds for myself or friends, I can carry everything, or just curated playlists, with the toggle of a button, and I can preserve them on any medium I find - mechanical HDs, SD cards, SSDs, etc.

Though I am very curious about vinyl...

"Ooh I wanna listen to [song], let me just....find the CD....put the CD in the tray...find the track number...skip to that track...wait for CD player to scan and start..."

FLAC is everything good about CDs minus the headache. Sure you can't physically hold the liner notes but it's not like that hasn't been digitized, too!

But... those other storage mediums can also get damaged, burn, rot, etc and are also less portable (excluding the SD cards anyway).

Lets also put "quitting your job" on there because thats what i see a lot of ppl not doing because they feel bad about it

You have a point except the portability. A single USB drive is infinitely more portable than a large cd collection.

Nothing a decent backup strategy can't mitigate. Also less portable? Between the massive storage available on digital audio players and using jellyfin with something like symphonium digital audio is massively more portable.

I totally get it. Kids missed out on everything good.

Too bad DVDs and CDs will quit being made soon, and disc rot sets in on most discs in 20 years. Luckily mine have survived. But make backups. Although that's why "they (the rich)" want to drive up the price of HDDs so we can't afford it, so we are tied to their cloud systems forever.

Good luck young people !

I only listen to albums all the way through when using CDs and vinyl, so track search doesn't matter to me. CDs are the pinnacle of digital physical media for audio. Large enough, copyable, portable, not too big to store.

Your hard drive can be erased in many ways. And soon you wont be able to afford them or be allowed to own them.

Vinyl lasts forever. Its only damaged if you play it 😐

1. Because that's not cool.

2. Because its information overload (name even 50 albums and the songs on them. Humans dont need thousands of albums. Our brains are not meant for this much information. You can't appreciate 1000 albums)

3. It has no resale value. And if that HDD dies or you die and your family doesn't know how to use it or how to decrypt it, its useless.

I don't consider HDDs physical media per se. No one is handing down hard drives or selling them at yard sales. I can play my great grandpas 1890 shellac records. Think a hard drive will be able to do that? Hell no.

FYI, Tidal is approximately the same price as Spotify and there are several tools floating around on GitHub which will allow you to download high quality flac files from that service.

I wonder why specifically DVDs... It's not like with audio formats where the experience is almost as or even more important than the quality; Blu-Ray delivers far better quality with the same experience. If they were into Laserdisc I'd understand, but DVD?

They're not even that much more expensive. Maybe the initial cost of getting a player is higher?

They make record players that use lasers so they don’t slowly wear down the grooves

its still declining, just slower

Properly manufactured Audio CDs are actually quite resilient, obviously not so much to scratches, but out of all my 100+ CDs (I'd say half of which are older than 25 years) only one has disc rot and that one is a pressing made by PDO who're known for their bad pressings that are prone to disc rot.

I don't really store my CDs in a special way either.

I don’t consider HDDs physical media per se.

Ok. But I can touch mine ... they seem very physical.

No one is handing down hard drives or selling them at yard sales

Because it's easier to just copy the data to someone else's drive, no need to physically hand it over. Also you can still keep the CDs after copying them to another medium.

Because its information overload

That seems more like a personal problem than a technical one.

It has no resale value. And if that HDD dies or you die and your family doesn’t know how to use it or how to decrypt it, its useless.

Have you looked at HDD prices recently? You can definitely resell them. The ones I bought 3 years ago now cost double the price! And all data should be backup anyway so you don't lose anything on a disc failure. And the last point can be addressed by either just not encrypting your drive or leave the proper instructions behind.

All in all those are minor inconveniences compared to dealing with thousand of CDs.

qobuz too!

Technically network connected blu ray players can be updated to region lock you out of your content.

There's a reason it's called Blu-Ray DVD

Can we stop publishing these articles? I was enjoying the cheap CDs.

CDs were so much better for my kids than any other digital player. Especially when they couldn't read yet. It's much easier to choose a CD and put it into a player than opening an app to search for something.

They’re likely at the point of not just wanting to own things but not being able to afford subs.
.

All your points about HDDs being physical assume you have computer knowledge to know what to do with a HDD.

There's USB ones, but that's what your limited to when it comes to casual users who just want it to work.

Everyone old enough knows how to handle a CD.

But the rest still applies so in what ways are a CD better than FLAC? Flash drives take up even less space and can hold hundreds of albums. Arguably even more "portable" because disc drives aren't common anymore

Personally I never upgraded from DVD to Bluray because of the costs and DRM. And while I waited for those to be solved streaming got good enough.

Perhaps these kids' parents are the same, so they just use what they have.

Or the article's author just calls every video disc a DVD.

I'm happy to just pirate this shit.

I recently revived my record player and CD player and I've been enjoying three things:

1. You have to think about what to listen to,
2. the player is completely offline and separate from the devices you work and communicate on, so nothing will interrupt and you feel you're doing something different, and
3. it means you listen to whole albums, not mixed up playlists, so you get deeper into it.

What I don't enjoy is that records in particular are ridiculously expensive now. I don't know who can afford them. So I'm stuck with the records and CDs of my youth and whatever I can find in bargain bins.

I do also use Qobuz and... other means of obtaining music.

Even if you don't use a USB one, you basically just put the thing in the slot and start up the machine, maybe it needs some formatting. It's not brain surgery. Again, it still easily beats dealing with unmanageable number of CDs.

Everyone old enough knows how to handle a CD.

Actually, more and more people are too young to know how to handle CDs these days.

Too bad DVDs and CDs will quit being made soon

We're still making vinyl records. What on earth makes you think we're going to stop making DVDs?

3D printing your own guns

Just buy a normal fucking gun, this is America ffs there are more guns than people.

"Put the thing in the slot".

Which slot? Where?

"Formatting it"

Format a drive? What's that?

"Its nor brain surgery".

Your assuming a tech literacy that simply doesnt exisit in the general populace.

So don't connect them to the Internet

Those never worked well. They pick up every tiny bit of dust and scratch, far more than a stylus does. If you keep your stylus in good condition, changing it regularly, and set up your tonearm correctly, it shouldn't harm the records.

HDDs are not designed to last very long. Neither are SSDs. That's one reason to prefer dedicated physical media.

Which slot? Where?

The one shaped like the thing ...

Format a drive? What’s that?

Depending on your setup it will even promt you do do this, all you have to do is click a couple of dialogs. Or lookup like a 5 step guide on the internet.

Your assuming a tech literacy that simply doesnt exisit in the general populace.

I think I'm making a very reasonable assumption about tech literacy here ... yours might just be below the general populace.

You can still keep the CDs around for archive purposes, but to me CDs are no longer a viable option for actual media playback.

I don’t buy band media anymore but I do go out to live shows and buy t-shirts and other merch like nobody’s business.

Record company middlemen and forever streaming can take a hike.

I've been collecting physical media for over 30 years. Started with VHS, CD's and DVD's back in the day. Now I'm primarily a blu ray/4k collector as the image and sound quality is closest to the filmmaker's intentions.

It's been hard to see physical media slow down production over the past 5 years. The biggest loss is the wealth of information from all the special features that are now considered over and above what studios are willing to pay for. It's unfortunate that the newer generation can't expect features on par with what Peter Jackson shared on his Lord of the Rings Extended discs. (I know there are still boutique labels putting out great discs loaded with features, but they are fewer by the year and costly.)

There are some moments in time where the world really surprises though, and it's been a pleasant turn of events to see Gen Z embrace VHS!? The resurgence of vinyl was understandable as the sound exhibits a warmth and depth. VHS is a bit of a head-scratcher, but I can understand its nostalgic appeal. Just happy that people are enjoying physical media in any form.

I do go out to live shows and buy t-shirts and other merch like nobody’s business.

Who doesn't love a cool band t-shirt?

Yes, just being pedantic with a risk that people don’t think of.

I think the blu ray secret keys leaked so you can rip them anyways.

If you spend a lot of time sitting next to a CD player they're still OK for now. For music on the move, not so much. And when the player breaks it will be hard to replace. So they're definitely not perfect.

Yeah. 3D printing a gun is a great way to blow your hand off.

Even if you're at home and do have a CD player it's just not practical. Sure, if you only listen to a handful of CDs that's workable.

But my current music collection would require 1400+ CDs .. and good luck finding a specific song in that pile, even if you do know the exact album it's on. It's so much better to just have a searchable library.

your thinking the average as the mean.

I'm meaning average to be 20th percentile.

meaning "most" people where your average would only include half of all people.

my favourite park ranger quote was talking about why bear proof bear garbage containers weren't better. The answer was along the lines of there's a siginificat overlap between cleaver bears, and not so cleaver people.

you have to account for more than average, you have yo account for below it, so that its accesaible to more than 50% of people.