Owned media
- 1 minUntil a little more than a decade ago, we’d regularly head to the video rental shop (replaced by SPAR in later years). We’d peruse the shelves for a title we both agreed on, handing £2.50 over in exchange for watching the film that evening.
This was prior to the per-item value of media plummeting to near zero.
Pirating platforms started the downward trend. Napster, Kazaa, Limewire and the ilk trained a good chunk of the population to download and watch entertainment rather than pay and watch. This was the start of societies conditioning to accept digital items as a viable replacement for physical items. This movement was only accelerated by Bit Torrent.
Fast forward to today, and streaming platforms have almost completely removed the transactional element of media consumption. Exchanging money for a single item has been replaced by multiple streaming platforms. In exchange for your monthly payment, which is typically cheaper than buying a new DVD, you’ll get temporary access to a library of material.
In many ways, this is a better setup. Unfortunately, you’re left with nothing after your subscription.
Thankfully, the trend towards valueless means you can buy (and therefore keep) pretty much any film or TV show older than a couple years for less than a DVD used to cost to hire.
Charities can now benefit from your choice of movie.