You're exactly right and this really hammered it home for me; the generation today is not into owning a physical piece of media.

In the 70's, owning an LP was awesome (and necessary) because there was usually some effort put into the artwork. Today, no one wants to own a mass produced DVD/BluRay Disc with shitty artwork and no liner notes.

Some CD's still come with good artwork, but the generation now values owning digital media.

> the generation now values owning digital media I think you've missed the point, it isn't about ownership at all, or even that the media is digital. Its that what we value is access to the media. We're willing to pay a nominal fee for access to it, but that's really all we care about: Having the media play when we want it to. Ownership of the media is irrelevant to our experience of the media...unless not owning it means we cannot experience it.

Yes, this was what I was getting at. I don't want or need to have some physical object that tells me "this is my media". We've been through enough format changes to understand that "this is my media for ten years, then I'll need to convert it or buy it again." Access is the key, not ownership.

That being said, I am deeply concerned about central media control allowing companies and governments to become revisionist; editing out controversial portions of various works as they see fit. I would like to see legislation that would prevent that.

>We've been through enough format changes to understand that "this is my media for ten years, then I'll need to convert it or buy it again." Access is the key, not ownership.

I guess this is what the RIAA/MPAA doesn't like with the streaming business, they can't resell the same material every time a new standard comes out.

I'ma bit older than the current generation, and I'm not into owning physical media. Packaged software has seemed obsolete for at least 10 years, and packaged CDs or DVDs just seem absurd. Currently, a CD is a one time vessel to transport high quality audio to my computer to turn into MP3s. I've used the CD drive on my two year old MacBook exactly twice. Buying a CD to get music just seems absurd, but I do like accompanying media. I'd love if my favorite bands would mail me a glossy pamphlet when I bought an album, that is more exciting than a downloadable pamphlet.

My brother, on the other hand, is a bit older and fetishizes music packages. He still has a giant shelf of cassettes, a rack of records, and a huge row of CDs, elaborately alphabetized.

I'm of the current generation, and I'm into owning CDs. As far as music goes, burned albums have been around since middle school and earlier, but to me having the actual jewel case signifies ownership and support of the artist, even if I mostly listen to their music on an mp3 player.

But that's just my thing; DVDs I care much less about. I do value physical books significantly, though. The difference is, of course, is that a stack of dead trees is independent of electricity (unlike CDs or DVDs) yet has higher resolution than anything electronic.

For me, as a member of that current generation, I value highly my ownership of digital files. I can't get into things like Rdio, I love Pandora for just throwing on like a radio though.

But when it comes to my music collection, I've been gathering these MP3s for something like 13 years now. And many of my most valued recordings are audience/soundboard recordings of live shows, something the current services don't really offer.

I see. Perhaps the 'generation' that comes after you will be the people who treasure their AmazonBook Cloudplex Music and Pandora.FM accounts, and reject beaming music directly into their minds.

> but the generation now values owning digital media.

It's not necessarily that the generation does not value physical ownership anymore, but that there rarely is any value left in physical ownership.

This is the case in just about any digital media: a few years ago, video games came in big cardboard boxes lush with items, with big manuals and interesting artwork, etc...

Today, they generally come in plastic DVD cases with a 2-leave "booklets" which isn't worth the cost of the paper it's printed on, and even "collector" editions are garbage.

There are exceptions to this trend: The Witcher II on the video game side, or some deluxe packages (NiN's Ghosts I-IV "Deluxe" and "Ultra-Deluxe" limited editions were awesome, so were Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse's DNOTS book package and Sigur Rós's Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, as far as I'm concerned) but by and large physical ownership is worthless, because there is no additional value in it[0] compared to purely digital. edit: and there usually is a severe loss in usability (you have to install or transcode the physical media to your digital devices), plus no gain (most DRM-laden purely-digital media tend to be DRM-laden as physical products as well, so physical ownership is just a shiny box for your virtual leasing).

[0] not completely true for music, services or artists offering lossless tracks are few and far between overall, so while I've pretty much entirely switched to non-physical ownership for video games (via GoG and Steam), I usually go with physical for music, but my motivations to do so are not the most common: I consume my music with an album or artist granularity (I never buy single songs), I value the lossless quality (CD or above) as a backup source and I don't mind waiting for music (I don't buy huge amounts of it and tend to go "all out" when I do, getting the complete discography of a given artist in one fell swoop)

I think that it isn't the value of digital media that has increased... no one values something that is readily available. It is the value of LPs that has significantly decreased in the face of the convenience that digital media provides.

I buy CDs because I find value in paying $10-12 for a CD that I'll listen to multiple times. There are CDs that I bought 15 years ago that I still listen to multiple times in a year or even a month.

I do not buy DVDs because I find no value in paying $30 for something I'll watch once and then let sit in a box somewhere. Instead, I pay Netflix $8 a month to watch a a couple movie or TV series in a month. I don't have something lingering around on a shelf taking up space I'll never use again and I think $8 is a reasonable price.

Even assuming you're also paying for Hulu Plus, MLB.tv, and a few iTunes/Amazon rentals, you're still spending far less than the average cable subscriber.

And having our more specific needs met. As a consumer, I have never bought into this idea that I need packaged channels. I am happily moving along into the on-demand culture, a culture that is also crossed with intelligent recommendation systems tailored to me as opposed to the general viewing public in an area.

That's fine, but you can't exactly blame MPAA, RIAA for not readily embracing a business model of making less money.

Now if someone could created an integrated device around the $200 price point that will allow me to watch these items via the Internet and still DVR OTA broadcasts, I'd be set.

Roku is close, but they don't do the OTA part. TiVo is way too expensive to just use for OTA and they're very slow I brining on new online content.

Yes, I don't really see how the RIAA/MPAA would be excited by this. I don't think the entertainment industry is sustainable at $9 per month per household.

If these new business models cannot support the current size of the movie industry they're still going to complain. An industry will never voluntarily shrink. Spotify is a great example, since IIRC they are paying most of their revenue to the labels yet that is still dramatically less money than the labels made from CDs.

perhaps, but being paid _something_ if significantly better than getting nothing at all -- let us not forget that in their heyday, CD prices went up to $15-$18 apiece, and people paid because there was simply no other option.I seriously doubt that the record industry wants to made obsolete to everyone but the few vinyl enthusiasts that are still out there.

This raises the question of whether Netflix/Spotify/etc. are replacing piracy or DVDs/CDs. If it's mostly the latter, the industry should wait for the old system to finish collapsing before embracing the new one.

SSSHHHHHHSSSHHHHHH!!!!!

You're giving away Netflix secret sauce!

They KNEW the shift in perceived value and have completely owned the execution of exploiting that shift.

This is why I said that netflix is YEARS ahead of every other player.

Plus, they have Adrian as their cloud arch and he is a damn genius.

The way I see it, Netflix is like a negotiator on the side of viewers. The job they have chosen for themselves is to make the biggest pile of content they can, and charge for access to the pile. So, in a real sense, they are working for the people that want access to the pile. This is part of why Netflix customers get a personal sort of attachment to the service, it feels like they are on "our side" (or at least, the interests and incentives line up).

This is seen for me in a few things. Media type was/is irrelevant; whatever the group of people paying to see the pile want is what the will try to do. Service above and beyond the strict terms of contract. I can't be the only person to whom this has happened: the next disc on my queue was found in Netflix's system, but very far across the country. So they sent that one, but knowing it wouldn't arrive in the usual prompt time frame, they also sent the next one at no extra charge. I don't know of any contractual terms that forced them to do that.

Producers, distributors, and advertisers have long had a seat at the negotiations table in the media world. I feel like Netflix has taken the role of being the viewers' representative at that table, and they are doing very well in that role. No wonder old media companies don't care for them much.