http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/commen...of_albums_you/
Seems like no one values owning a physical copy of anything anymore. Kind of sad to me really. Even if the thread is about music, I see it is prevalent in video games as well.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/commen...of_albums_you/
Seems like no one values owning a physical copy of anything anymore. Kind of sad to me really. Even if the thread is about music, I see it is prevalent in video games as well.
I see plenty of people in that topic talking about how they still like to buy physical albums.
I think music is a bit different from games. If you're a PC gamer exclusively, that's one thing, but it'd be kind of silly to own a PS3, 360, Wii U, Vita, 3DS, or whatever and never buy any physical releases. They're designed around playing physical releases (with some digital releases on top of that). With music, who packs a CD player around these days? Even as much of a neo-Luddite as I am, I've been using an iPod for years. People are less and less listening to their music straight off of CDs. In my case, I still buy all my music physically and I do make a point to pop them in a CD player at home now and then, but the vast majority of my listening is done after I rip the albums and transfer the files to my iPod. I can see how others who aren't attached to the physical goods would want to skip that step and simply buy digitally and drop the music straight onto an mp3 player of some kind.
I think a music lover who is not a video game fan would look at this in the same way - perhaps they'd be absolutely fine with digital only copies or emulation of video games because its a passing fad for them, but they're fanatical about music so they must have physical copies of albums.
I know a lot of video game collectors who are also big vinyl record collectors and they're just as passionate about having complete and mint copies of their albums.
See I'm not a huge music collector so downloading songs or digital copies are just fine with me. Video games though, gimme my carts
MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
http://www.youtube.com/user/atarileaf
I guess I'm an old fart, not even going to follow that link given what you said. I value it, greatly. I find it disturbing where gaming is going because of the controls and inevitable loss of ownership tied to it. If I have a choice of a game or a long term digital rental(let's be serious, that's really what it is) I'll pay more for the real copy even if it is another 5, 10 or 20 bucks. I grew up on the NES to start and that damn thing still works as do my games. Does anyone reading this think in 20-30years Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft will give a shit if your system from this dying era croaks taking down 100s or 1000s in digital downloads with it? They won't, your stuff is gone. We've seen licenses expire and games pulled like Turtles was on Wii or even a few books at times on the Amazon Kindle(and those were remotely assholishly erased from owners kindles over wifi.) If and when I do buy a digital copy I'm looking at the FREE to $10 range and at $10 is better be amazing and I have yet to and likely won't pay more than that.
I have different feelings about different forms of media. With classic games, I want to own the original hardware. It doesn't feel right if I'm playing a burned disc instead of a real PC Engine game. But I'm the other way around about music, CDs just get in the way and my music collection is on a hard drive. (Maybe you wouldn't call that a "collection" but I'm not a music collector..)
I would like to get into vinyl though. I'd like to get a good quality hifi system and listen to old music that way, recreating the original experience sort of like we do with video game hardware. But I don't have the space for that.
Pretty much every form of media I'd prefer to have a physical copy rather than a digital one. Especially when I can go to the local flea market and pick up complete music albums for less than the price of a single song on iTunes.
As much as I love having physical copies, I am not opposed to the idea of digital copies. What I am opposed to is the DRM (which we also see on some physical product as well) that all to often comes with it.
⃟Mario says "... if you do drugs, you go to hell before you die."
I like owning carts, but optical discs can go straight to hell and take their unbearable loading times with them.
Digital distribution might not be ideal outside of PC games, but it's getting better.
I prefer physical media every time. Even with music, I generally don't listen to it straight from the CD, but I still prefer to get a CD and rip it. Digital music sales always seemed like a rip-off to me. The price for a digital album is usually similar, except you don't get a durable physical copy, you don't get the booklet with liner notes (sometimes this is significant), and the audio quality isn't as good unless it's FLAC or something, which it never is. If I'm just going to get a set of MP3's, I might as well just pirate it. I'm not big on pirating, but at the same time, I feel like if I'm going to pay my hard-earned money, I should be getting something of value over piracy.
Also, if you have non-mainstream tastes, there's a lot of stuff that just isn't available on iTunes or whatever.
Last edited by j_factor; 12-30-2012 at 01:58 AM.
Originally Posted by TheShawn
I read through some that debate. Seem to me that it was a fairly even mix of people who loved the experience of a physical product and those that loved the convenience of digital distribution, and neither sentiment was necessary exclusive.
Personally I don't mind digital products. I only own as many games as I do because it is my collection, and I enjoy the "thrill of the hunt" as much as I do playing some of these titles. Also I want something tangible in return for my money, I don't see the logic in paying full price for a temporary "license" to experience a game when I could own a physical release. But for a significant discount I'll download a game I just want to "play".
While this compariosn is neat, I think that video games have a lot more to worry about in terms of DRM crippling support than music does, and that is a pretty important factor to think about when comparing physical vs. digital in this kind of debate.
After all, when a song disappears from the digital marketplace, there's usually MP3s, Youtube Uploads, and P2Ps to keep it's distribution going, but digital video games don't exactly work that way.
I don't own a single digital piece of music, and I don't intend to. I do indeed still carry around a portable CD player and happily listen to my CD's one at a time on long car trips.
What pisses me off is when people troll you for buying physical. I had someone harass me at Best Buy as I was grabbing CD's on my birthday a few years back. He went out of his way to try to make me feel like an idiot for not downloading them instead.
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