Moving Away from Physical Media

A weird thing is happening to my media purchasing habits. I’m finding myself buying less and less physical media, opting more frequently for digital media.

For some background, I have roughly 50 Blu-Rays, dozens of DVDs, about 150 LPs and used to have several hundred video games. Suffice to say, I spent a lot of time at Best Buy, GameStop and local record stores adding more and more to my collections.

But over the last 18 months or so, I’ve moved further away from buying physical media, and I’m not entirely sure why.

Starting with music, I’ve probably only purchased 10 records over the last 12 months, and six of them came in one mega buy. With the advent of streaming music, I have a hard time pulling the trigger on albums, even the ones that are $15. I still enjoy ‘window’ shopping online, scoping out deals, but often convince myself that I don’t actually need to buy anything due to my Apple Music subscription.

Onto games, I picked up a PlayStation 4 in September 2014, and have still yet to purchase a $60 physical title. In fact, the only game I’ve ever purchased was a year-old baseball game for $13.

Now I have bought several titles from the PlayStation Store, but opted for the quick digital download instead of the disc.

Movies, of course, have decreased with the advent of streaming via Netflix and even iTunes. I can’t justify paying $20 for a movie I’ll watch once, despite loving the look of a solid movie collection.

In the end, I actually find this sad. I’ve always enjoyed the process of going to a brick and mortar store, looking through the inventory and making a selection. But it’s getting harder and harder to justify that process with the ease of which media is delivered in the 21st century.

It’s strange to think that my unborn children will never know what that process is like. Already kids in junior high school may have the vaguest memories of going to Blockbuster on a Friday night with friends and trying to figure out what to rent, only to find out *GASP* the movie is out of stock.

In the end, though, my wife isn’t complaining about her living room being overrun with video games and records. Happy wife, happy life, right?