You should absolutely download it all! In my online writing groups, there are multiple cases of people who have lost all their work for a publication because the website went under, or changed its structure, or whatever. I bet you could even hire someone for a few hours to do this for you, to your specifications. (And how I'm thinking I should do the same.)
I just wrote about this, too -- especially the way that the cost of a CD (a big chunk of my teenage income) forced me to really try to like the music I'd bought. I ended up appreciating a lot of stuff that I probably wouldn't today; now, I'll just hit skip and let the algorithm give me something more similar to what I'm used to.
Yes. Very much my experience. A CD was an investment and I was going to do my best to recoup that investment. Even some of the bands are similar. I listened to that Counting Crows album constantly for a while, but hardly ever since. Smashing Pumpkins I still listen to. I'm a bit older than you, so I saw them on the way up when I was in college and that established a bond. U2 would've been my favorite band in like 1987, but they've lost me since. It's interesting to think about these evolutions.
I read ebooks almost exclusively, borrowing most from the library. But when a book really pierces me to my soul, I then buy a physical copy to be sure I always have access. This happens most often with nonfiction for me. I only have so much room for books. I read a lot more than I have room for, so ebooks help me to curate what I own physically. And I love being able to look up a word definition with a single long press on the word.
Thank you for the rec! I haven’t read any Ozeki but have always wanted to. And I second the recommendation for Office of Historical Corrections! It made me love short stories.
I have to say, because this is who I am, that I liked about 75-80% of it. That said, it is a book like no other, and had some unique lovable qualities.
I do love having my books all over the house! It *does* feel like an extension of me. We don’t have any of our old cassettes, but we’ve held onto our CDs. And, I’ll occasionally print out an online essay if it really resonated. It feels silly and wasteful, but it’s nice to be able to page through the binder and revisit these amazing pieces.
I used to have over 700 movies on DVD. I got rid of about 650 of them when I had to move across the world for a job. At the time I had two thoughts I kick myself over:
1) The ones I got rid of were mostly the mainstream, commonly found movies. Those'll always be around, right??
2) "Time to give up childish things."
Now of the 50 I have left, I have some content that literally is not streaming anywhere ever, ever, anywhere ever. For instance the puppet animations of Jiri Barta, or experimental films from Other Digital, or the short films of David Lynch. My gut goes cold thinking of if I got I'd of them.
But also, that idea that I'd always find those other movies? Whoops.
For instance, when I wrote an article last year about the writers and actors strikes, I was checking up some details about streaming residuals and discovered that Netflix doesn't have ANY movie made before the 1940s! That means two things: customers using Netflix are missing at least a third of film history, which includes one of the richest, most productive decades for genuine timeless classics (the 1920s); and Netflix doesn't see fit to stream stuff EVEN IF it's public domain and thus all upside to their content library. In short, depth of the library is not the point. Netflix only wants wideness to attract different demographics, but once those demographics find their pool, it's rather shallow.
Anyway enough about Netflix. The issue is that even though I want to collect more Blu-Rays and rebuild my library, it is very hard. Most of the movies I like are independent and often they don't even make Blu-Rays for them anymore. I live in New York City and the only retailer I know that sells Blu-Rays is Barnes & Noble. I can name a half dozen record stores and I don't even buy records!
A huge swathe of film history has been lost. Huge. At the height of DVD mania, frankly basically everything was available. It got to the point where studios like Warner Bros were digging down to the back of their vaults for completely forgotten 50s musicals and films noir for manufacture-on-demand. To find something "rare" meant a movie made in a non-rich country several decades ago that was probably experimental and is only remembered because it was placed on a film catalog somewhere. Now I can't buy a French film from 2017 that I saw recently and loved.
The Blu-Ray market is oddly hollow and the streamers starkly limited in scope and curation. This leaves me missing my 700 movies, not sure how many of them I'll ever get to see again.
I didn't know that about no pre 1940s movies on Netflix. I think maybe the Max service has some older movies because they're partnered with whatever classic movie service Time Warner also owns, but that's still another expense. Some of those films may still be in libraries, but I know people are pushing for libraries to divest those materials too. It's strange to think that in this day and age media could disappear, but it's true!
Books, CDs, DVDs--I have them all. I use Spotify and a Kindle but they seem like mirages to me. I fret about what will happen to my Kindle books if Amazon abandons the technology.
At one time I had almost 10,000 books in a 3 story house. When we retired and bought an RV, I rented a storage area and filled it with books. But gradually over the years I gave away books (sold some through Amazon) and got rid of the storage. A difficult experience. I now have several hundred books but they have special meaning - authors I love, gifts from people, a few from my mother's childhood and from my childhood. But I miss having a house full of books. I read a lot on my kindle but holding a physical book still brings me a particular kind of pleasure. I did get rid of cassettes but am still hanging onto a small selection of CD's.
10,000! We moved too often over a number of years for me to get there, but if I had kept everything over time, I think I would've made it. I think my future is something like yours, the small universe of books that I have to be among to feel right.
Back when we kept physical media, we weren't always able to find & purchase the exact media we wanted (just like anything else we shop for.) We are now in the habit of *thinking* we can have whatever we want at our fingertips (via streaming). Streaming has never and could never actually deliver on this. However, the actual selling point of streaming is to have instant access to someone else's catalog, which feels like a good bargain given that we couldn't always find some of what we wanted otherwise. We are now finding that the only way to have exactly what we want at our fingertips is to own a physical copy of it. Which is still difficult to find. This train of thought still feels very circular, but also accurate. Tell me what I'm missing?
"I felt humbled by the knowledge of what we give up when we are young, believing that we will find something just as good or better some day, only to discover that not to be so." -bell hooks, teaching to transgress
I think that's right. We were sold on-demand, but what if we demand something that isn't being sold? And really, on streaming services half the time I scroll through what's available and end up watching nothing, or something I've seen before, like Northern Exposure.
I have DVDs of the first two seasons of the inexcusably unstreamable Homicide: Life on the Street. Wish I had bought the rest of them. I also got rid of all my jewel cases but keep the actual CDs that matter to me in two cases that are about the size of large photo albums. Got rid of all my cassettes, including, tragically, an audio recording of my friends and I playing Dungeons and Dragons in the 7th grade. Books are a problem.
Exactly. There are already a handful of AI apps that will produce perfectly cromulent songs based on prompts in a matter of seconds. Online content could become a sea of crap that might make curation and moderation more important than the algorithm. Again.
My public library actually has Homicide on DVD and I've been meaning to watch it. They have a great selection of movies and TV shows on DVD that I sadly didn't make use of until a year or so ago. (I've heard that the public library in the next city over has gotten rid of all their DVDs and other AV materials, so I'm worried that will happen in mine too.) P.S. It looks like you can still buy Homicide on DVD, so it's not too late!
Streaming is renting. And there are some artists/albums I can’t imagine just renting - Miles Davis, John Coltrane, R.E.M, Prince, Wilco, to name a few. In the 90s and Aughts, a CD collection - displayed on shelves or in a CD “tower” - was a window into the personality of the owner, similar to books. I miss those windows.
I not only still have my CDs, I still buy CDs! Though honestly I never listen to them on the stereo, I just scan them into my computer and put them on my iPod to listen to in the car. I primarily listen to music on my phone via Spotify but it feels important when I find an album that I love to actually own it. I fear that it will go away somehow and I won't have access, and also owning the physical media makes me feel a sense of commitment and connection to the artist that I don't get from streaming alone.
In recent years I've noticed a great increase in CDs and DVDs available at Barnes & Noble, so I thought they were actually making a comeback.
As a librarian, I recommend your friend check his public library and surrounding libraries to order old movies, music and other AV materials. I just checked our library catalog and there are several copies of Dune pt. 1 to check out. Libraries keep hard copies of media for many reasons, one of which is to ensure things are available for historical purposes - something you mentioned is not guaranteed with streaming services.
I've started building a new cassette collection recently. A bunch of the indie labels I follow on Bandcamp release their music on vinyl, cassette, and CDs along with the digital.
When I moved from the U.S. to Italy, I gave away about 400 books, which pains me to this day. Since then I've been rebuilding my library, but where I live it can be hard and/or expensive to buy books in English and so I've resorted to e-books at times. And I hate them. Problem 1: they don't exist. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to look for a book on my shelves without once thinking to check my Kindle. If I like a book, I want to be able to see it there on my shelves. Problem 2: I miss the cover art (sorry, not the same on a screen), the feel of the paper, the ability to flip around easily in the pages (yeah, someone will tell me I can do that in an e-book, but again, not the same). To me there's comfort in the physicality of books—there they are, waiting, these little tangible reminders of great stories and valuable experiences, of who I am, or was, or want to be. And yeah, I absolutely do regret getting rid of my CDs.
You should absolutely download it all! In my online writing groups, there are multiple cases of people who have lost all their work for a publication because the website went under, or changed its structure, or whatever. I bet you could even hire someone for a few hours to do this for you, to your specifications. (And how I'm thinking I should do the same.)
I just wrote about this, too -- especially the way that the cost of a CD (a big chunk of my teenage income) forced me to really try to like the music I'd bought. I ended up appreciating a lot of stuff that I probably wouldn't today; now, I'll just hit skip and let the algorithm give me something more similar to what I'm used to.
https://medium.com/the-riff/how-committed-are-you-to-your-music-4c5a0c2c5d2a?sk=4c31d56a29a9bf7791ad0b0e73a8316a
Yes. Very much my experience. A CD was an investment and I was going to do my best to recoup that investment. Even some of the bands are similar. I listened to that Counting Crows album constantly for a while, but hardly ever since. Smashing Pumpkins I still listen to. I'm a bit older than you, so I saw them on the way up when I was in college and that established a bond. U2 would've been my favorite band in like 1987, but they've lost me since. It's interesting to think about these evolutions.
I read ebooks almost exclusively, borrowing most from the library. But when a book really pierces me to my soul, I then buy a physical copy to be sure I always have access. This happens most often with nonfiction for me. I only have so much room for books. I read a lot more than I have room for, so ebooks help me to curate what I own physically. And I love being able to look up a word definition with a single long press on the word.
I am with you on the definitions at your fingertip! Spoiled I am! My recourse, with a physical book, is having my phone at hand with Google ready.
LOL, same.
Thank you for the rec! I haven’t read any Ozeki but have always wanted to. And I second the recommendation for Office of Historical Corrections! It made me love short stories.
I absolutely loved A Tale for the Time Being.
I have to say, because this is who I am, that I liked about 75-80% of it. That said, it is a book like no other, and had some unique lovable qualities.
I do love having my books all over the house! It *does* feel like an extension of me. We don’t have any of our old cassettes, but we’ve held onto our CDs. And, I’ll occasionally print out an online essay if it really resonated. It feels silly and wasteful, but it’s nice to be able to page through the binder and revisit these amazing pieces.
I used to have over 700 movies on DVD. I got rid of about 650 of them when I had to move across the world for a job. At the time I had two thoughts I kick myself over:
1) The ones I got rid of were mostly the mainstream, commonly found movies. Those'll always be around, right??
2) "Time to give up childish things."
Now of the 50 I have left, I have some content that literally is not streaming anywhere ever, ever, anywhere ever. For instance the puppet animations of Jiri Barta, or experimental films from Other Digital, or the short films of David Lynch. My gut goes cold thinking of if I got I'd of them.
But also, that idea that I'd always find those other movies? Whoops.
For instance, when I wrote an article last year about the writers and actors strikes, I was checking up some details about streaming residuals and discovered that Netflix doesn't have ANY movie made before the 1940s! That means two things: customers using Netflix are missing at least a third of film history, which includes one of the richest, most productive decades for genuine timeless classics (the 1920s); and Netflix doesn't see fit to stream stuff EVEN IF it's public domain and thus all upside to their content library. In short, depth of the library is not the point. Netflix only wants wideness to attract different demographics, but once those demographics find their pool, it's rather shallow.
Anyway enough about Netflix. The issue is that even though I want to collect more Blu-Rays and rebuild my library, it is very hard. Most of the movies I like are independent and often they don't even make Blu-Rays for them anymore. I live in New York City and the only retailer I know that sells Blu-Rays is Barnes & Noble. I can name a half dozen record stores and I don't even buy records!
A huge swathe of film history has been lost. Huge. At the height of DVD mania, frankly basically everything was available. It got to the point where studios like Warner Bros were digging down to the back of their vaults for completely forgotten 50s musicals and films noir for manufacture-on-demand. To find something "rare" meant a movie made in a non-rich country several decades ago that was probably experimental and is only remembered because it was placed on a film catalog somewhere. Now I can't buy a French film from 2017 that I saw recently and loved.
The Blu-Ray market is oddly hollow and the streamers starkly limited in scope and curation. This leaves me missing my 700 movies, not sure how many of them I'll ever get to see again.
I didn't know that about no pre 1940s movies on Netflix. I think maybe the Max service has some older movies because they're partnered with whatever classic movie service Time Warner also owns, but that's still another expense. Some of those films may still be in libraries, but I know people are pushing for libraries to divest those materials too. It's strange to think that in this day and age media could disappear, but it's true!
The Criterion streaming service is essential for access to early films, but it's not cheap.
There’s also a flip side problem of things that are streaming-only, because that massively cuts off library access. There are streaming services libraries can get (for $$$$), but it’s not universal. A little dated, but this gives you some idea: https://www.libraryfutures.net/post/who-can-watch-this-years-academy-award-nominees
Books, CDs, DVDs--I have them all. I use Spotify and a Kindle but they seem like mirages to me. I fret about what will happen to my Kindle books if Amazon abandons the technology.
At one time I had almost 10,000 books in a 3 story house. When we retired and bought an RV, I rented a storage area and filled it with books. But gradually over the years I gave away books (sold some through Amazon) and got rid of the storage. A difficult experience. I now have several hundred books but they have special meaning - authors I love, gifts from people, a few from my mother's childhood and from my childhood. But I miss having a house full of books. I read a lot on my kindle but holding a physical book still brings me a particular kind of pleasure. I did get rid of cassettes but am still hanging onto a small selection of CD's.
10,000! We moved too often over a number of years for me to get there, but if I had kept everything over time, I think I would've made it. I think my future is something like yours, the small universe of books that I have to be among to feel right.
Back when we kept physical media, we weren't always able to find & purchase the exact media we wanted (just like anything else we shop for.) We are now in the habit of *thinking* we can have whatever we want at our fingertips (via streaming). Streaming has never and could never actually deliver on this. However, the actual selling point of streaming is to have instant access to someone else's catalog, which feels like a good bargain given that we couldn't always find some of what we wanted otherwise. We are now finding that the only way to have exactly what we want at our fingertips is to own a physical copy of it. Which is still difficult to find. This train of thought still feels very circular, but also accurate. Tell me what I'm missing?
"I felt humbled by the knowledge of what we give up when we are young, believing that we will find something just as good or better some day, only to discover that not to be so." -bell hooks, teaching to transgress
I think that's right. We were sold on-demand, but what if we demand something that isn't being sold? And really, on streaming services half the time I scroll through what's available and end up watching nothing, or something I've seen before, like Northern Exposure.
Thanks for the post. Hey you inspired me, so I wrote my first substack entry today! Analogue is the way!
I have DVDs of the first two seasons of the inexcusably unstreamable Homicide: Life on the Street. Wish I had bought the rest of them. I also got rid of all my jewel cases but keep the actual CDs that matter to me in two cases that are about the size of large photo albums. Got rid of all my cassettes, including, tragically, an audio recording of my friends and I playing Dungeons and Dragons in the 7th grade. Books are a problem.
Tangentially related to this conversation is the article in today's NY Times magazine about Matt Farley, a suburban dad who has gamed the Spotify system by writing and uploading thousands of songs about any subject he can think of (more than half of them are just a kid's name followed by the word poop a bunch of times). Literally the streaming version of Steve Bannon's "flooding the zone with shit." https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/magazine/spotify-matt-farley.html?ugrp=u&unlocked_article_code=1.g00.nsvm.biHoUgC7y951&smid=url-share
That is amazing. Generative AI will make this even easier.
Exactly. There are already a handful of AI apps that will produce perfectly cromulent songs based on prompts in a matter of seconds. Online content could become a sea of crap that might make curation and moderation more important than the algorithm. Again.
My public library actually has Homicide on DVD and I've been meaning to watch it. They have a great selection of movies and TV shows on DVD that I sadly didn't make use of until a year or so ago. (I've heard that the public library in the next city over has gotten rid of all their DVDs and other AV materials, so I'm worried that will happen in mine too.) P.S. It looks like you can still buy Homicide on DVD, so it's not too late!
Streaming is renting. And there are some artists/albums I can’t imagine just renting - Miles Davis, John Coltrane, R.E.M, Prince, Wilco, to name a few. In the 90s and Aughts, a CD collection - displayed on shelves or in a CD “tower” - was a window into the personality of the owner, similar to books. I miss those windows.
I remember when I bought my second CD tower. It felt like an accomplishment.
I not only still have my CDs, I still buy CDs! Though honestly I never listen to them on the stereo, I just scan them into my computer and put them on my iPod to listen to in the car. I primarily listen to music on my phone via Spotify but it feels important when I find an album that I love to actually own it. I fear that it will go away somehow and I won't have access, and also owning the physical media makes me feel a sense of commitment and connection to the artist that I don't get from streaming alone.
In recent years I've noticed a great increase in CDs and DVDs available at Barnes & Noble, so I thought they were actually making a comeback.
As a librarian, I recommend your friend check his public library and surrounding libraries to order old movies, music and other AV materials. I just checked our library catalog and there are several copies of Dune pt. 1 to check out. Libraries keep hard copies of media for many reasons, one of which is to ensure things are available for historical purposes - something you mentioned is not guaranteed with streaming services.
I've started building a new cassette collection recently. A bunch of the indie labels I follow on Bandcamp release their music on vinyl, cassette, and CDs along with the digital.
I had no idea that cassettes were making a comeback!
Yea I didn’t notice them until a few months ago really! I guess it’s just starting up.
When I moved from the U.S. to Italy, I gave away about 400 books, which pains me to this day. Since then I've been rebuilding my library, but where I live it can be hard and/or expensive to buy books in English and so I've resorted to e-books at times. And I hate them. Problem 1: they don't exist. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to look for a book on my shelves without once thinking to check my Kindle. If I like a book, I want to be able to see it there on my shelves. Problem 2: I miss the cover art (sorry, not the same on a screen), the feel of the paper, the ability to flip around easily in the pages (yeah, someone will tell me I can do that in an e-book, but again, not the same). To me there's comfort in the physicality of books—there they are, waiting, these little tangible reminders of great stories and valuable experiences, of who I am, or was, or want to be. And yeah, I absolutely do regret getting rid of my CDs.