Steve Rubel: The End Of Tangible Media

November 14th, 2008

Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion writes “the end of tangible media is clearly in sight, and after reading his post and taking stock in my own media consumption habits – I agree.

Newspapers: Yep, no subscription – canceled the San Francisco Chronicle several years ago, and presently I’ll occasionally pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal at a newsstand – with the emphasis on occasionally – meaning once every other month. If the print version of any newspaper vanished tomorrow I wouldn’t mind.
Magazines: Currently subscribe to The Economist, Money, Real Simple, and Wired. Three out of those four were due to frequent flier miles that were due to expire, so I whittled them into magazine subscriptions. Again, if the print version vanished tomorrow I wouldn’t mind.
DVDs: I sold my entire DVD collection – save for Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek – earlier this year. I even gave some of the DVDs away on this here blog. Replacing it is a hodgepodge of the Apple TV, a Netflix / Roku Box, Hulu on the Apple TV, and a big hard drive streaming to the Apple TV. So it’s all digital, and I don’t believe I’ll buy any more DVDs in the future. This set up has also influenced Blu-Ray – not sure if I’ll even bother with that format since HD content distributed over the Internet is starting to show up faster than prices for Blu-Ray are falling.
CDs: Our entire CD collection is packed into file boxes in the closet. Haven’t cracked them open in years.
Books: I still occasionally buy books. I don’t think the Kindle is “there” yet in terms of a device I’d want to buy, but the concept of books delivered digitally is inevitable. I actually think Apple has a better shot at making the eBook format work. They already have many people dialed in with music and video delivered via iTunes. Adding books would be so easy they could do it in a weekend, and publishers would flock to them because of the huge installed base of iPods, Macs, and iPhones.

But getting back to the first point – is media increasingly moving to digital format? Yes. When will this happen? Soon. Is this a good thing? Yes. We’ll lose something in terms of quality (compression) or tangible, tactile form, but what we’ll gain is access to a vast variety and depth that is very difficult with physical media. With music, any song I can imagine is available at an instant either locally or through iTunes. It’s starting to happen with video as well – just do a search on YouTube. This is the “digital video nirvana” I’ve long dreamed of, made possible by the end of tangible media.

Bring it on.

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