Many PlayStation users were greeted with this legal notice recently:
PlayStation, due to “licensing changes” is deleting 1200 titles, including those that were purchased by users already, and not offering refunds.
The concept of ownership these days is tenuous. In the before-times, it was pretty clear. If you owned a record, a CD, a DVD…. that’s yours for however long you want it. You could sell it at a yard sale. You could Frisbee it at a neighbor you don’t like. That’s yours for all purposes with certain exceptions for illegal copying or pretending you’re a theater chain and trying to profit off the film yourself.
But as our technology changed, so did the way we consumed our media. Movie rental places were replaced by streaming services. Music aficionados actually pay for Spotify. You no longer have to go to a physical store and find the music you want. You could just yell in your house, “Alexa, play Running up that Hill by Kate Bush.”
Just yesterday I was reminded how things have changed. I was in a Discord with some friends. We were all playing separate games because the Eminem takeover killed Fortnite (don’t judge me) but meanwhile, we were using a bot called Jockie Music to play music for us while we talked. We went through some early 2000s emo, some pop 80s tracks, and on a whim one member played a soundtrack title from Final Fantasy. 800 miles apart, and we were all able to listen to the same music and request what we wanted from a personal digital DJ.
This topic also came to mind recently because I heard Best Buy was phasing out their DVD sales. Then I was in Target for Black Friday and their DVD section was one shelf. In Walmart the same, with the Entertainment section being taken over by tech.
Have you ever tried to look up a movie that is 10, 20, 30 years old and can’t find it? Or better yet, you find it, but it’s not free. You have to rent a movie that’s been playing on regular TV for free for decades. Last year I had a hankering for a bumbling, heavily accented father trying to get his little Anakin Skywalker the hottest toy of the season. I speak of course of the 1996 classic Jingle All the Way.
Pictured here: Me, looking for outdated movies in bargain bins.
I. Couldn’t. Find. It.
I had 4 streaming services to choose from. It was nowhere without having to rent a nearly 30-year-old movie. This year Disney+ has custody, so…cool I guess.
That’s the thing. These streaming services all buy and essentially “borrow” a lot of their content through licensing. They compete against each other. You want to watch all the Spider-mans? And I mean all of them? Good luck finding them all on one service. You can’t even watch the Andrew Garfield movies (all 2 of them) on one service.
Besides the streamers flipping through content like cards in a deck of Uno, you also have the very real possibility that a company will just arbitrarily decide “You know what? We need a tax break.” And they delete their own movie off their service with no physical media to back it up. Gone. That content that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and so many people’s time and energy to create… is gone forever.
HBO Max reportedly cut costs last year by deleting 20 shows and movies including those that belonged just to them. That’s content that exists nowhere else.
Surely you’ve also booted up a service like Netflix and started the endless scroll to find something to watch. That’s apparently something these companies are very concerned about. From the previously linked MSNBC article:
“With the coming addition of Discovery+ content, Warner Bros. Discovery executives are concerned HBO Max may get bogged down with little-watched films and shows. That could cause viewers to associate the service with having a lot of stuff they don’t want to watch — the “Netflix problem,” said one HBO Max executive, who asked not to be named because the decision was private.”
Digital content isn’t, necessarily, forever. I feel like the NFT bros have also come to this conclusion.
The case could be made for physical media to experience a resurgence. Heck, record sales are doing well. Yes, vinyl! Vinyl sales were up for the 17th year in a row, though the article I reference did mark a slow in growth, probably due to price increases.
I get it. The way movies have been marketed has been diluted by so many avenues, and folks don’t necessarily have $22 to lay down on a movie to add to their collection. But your favorite movies, the ones you want to go back to time and again? They’re worth it.
Maybe I’ll end this by proposing this ridiculous idea: Physical media on demand. Sure, the vast rows of TV season box sets and various editions of Blu-Ray and DVDs might have to be phased out, but perhaps there should be a way to custom order the physical media you want so it’s only produced when someone orders a copy. Less waste is created. But at least there has to be a way to keep digital copies of movies that were acquired legally. Otherwise, I think the pirates will probably win, and that’ll be yet another struggle in the film industry to fight.
Sources:
PlayStation Store To Lose More Than 1,200 Purchasable Titles – With No Refunds
Where to Watch Every Spider-Man Movie Online in 2023
Streaming services are removing tons of movies and shows — it’s not personal, it’s strictly business
Here’s why HBO Max is pulling dozens of films and TV series from the streaming platform
U.S. Vinyl Album Sales Rise for 17th Straight Year — But Growth Is Slowing
Header image: Photo 26195729 | Dvd © Tonny Anwar | Dreamstime.com
Bridget LaMonica 