Right now is the easiest time to be a music or film fan. Thereâs so much art being produced and released into the world every day, and itâs easily accessible to most people. We can discover a seemingly endless amount of media and rely on curated algorithms to recommend something for us to passively consume. Is that actually a good thing? Weâre gradually becoming detached from music and film as streaming services further push physical media and the theatrical experience of watching films out of the cultural zeitgeist.
As consumers of media, we demand constant output. Artists are pressured to ceaselessly produce and deliver consistent, rapid releases rather than long-term projects. Musicians will create shorter, algorithm-optimized songs to generate large amounts of streams, rather than focusing their efforts on artistic depth. They have to fit fast-changing criteria and create less experimental (less interesting) music to increase their engagement. If they fail to do this, we just move on to someone else who fits the template. Itâs a cycle and it shows that many consumers value quantity over quality. While itâs understandable to want your favorite director to release movies you love more often, this shift in society toward a commodity-based culture transforms music, film, and television into an all-you-can-consume slew of art. The media doesnât hold as much perceived value as it should.
Beyond the perspective of the consumer, artists do not receive fair pay for their work from streaming services. In the streaming economic model, artistsâ revenue is often extremely low, and royalty payments are unsustainable. Taking solely streaming into account, a musician would need to garner millions of streams to earn a living wage; theyâre paid fractions of a cent per stream. The revenue from a vinyl sale is marginally larger, even after the record label gets its share. Filmmakers generally made more money when their revenue stream was a mixture of ticket sales and DVD sales, rather than a mixture of ticket sales and streaming earnings or streaming earnings alone. Studios have had to pivot and reconsider the kinds of movies they can make while still making a profit, because consumers prioritize high volume, âbinge-worthyâ content over original stories in the theater. Both the audience habits and artistic integrity of film are being jeopardized.
If youâre looking for a way to combat this phenomenon, owning the physical versions of your favorite movies and albums is a great way to feel more connected to a given piece of media, and tangibly feel the value of it and the impact it has on you. It turns the experience into something intentional: the ritual of choosing the disc, opening the case, and committing your attention to the art. The physicality makes the art feel less disposable and more like a companion you have chosen to keep in your life.