Why is physical media dying?

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When I was younger and growing up, me and everybody else watched movies and played music on physical media. I first grew up with VHS and my family got a DVD player when I was 12, we got a lot of movies for that too. Video rental stores have died because everyone is downloading movies online now. It has died forever and people won't start watching physical movies again in my lifetime. Was having to drive to a store like that or any other thing from "back in the day" that was limiting compared to now really as bad as people like to say? To be honest, I just believe some people are saying physical media or things in the old days will never be obsolete are just sugar-coating and denying. We can't say what will happen in the future. I wish I was born 30 years earlier because the increasing volatility is scary to me.

For me it makes me bummed out and depressed. I don't really see me keeping interest in society itself anymore because all my obsessions and ways of doing things is becoming extincted and obsolete. Nothing or nobody is going to bring anything from the old days back and in my short-term future lifetime those things will no longer be recognizable at all. Some people are just snobby about it too. "Wow, you must wish everyone abandon convenience do you?"

My obsession is music rather than movies and vinyl has made a bit of a comeback. I still have a turn table.

I can go to record fayres and mingle with other vinyl enthusiasts.

It's still going to become extinct or obsoleted in the long-term.

Good thing I'll always be a non-conformist.

The simple answer is that digital media is easier and requires less effort

its hackable and debates can arise as to whether or not one truly owns a piece of digital media, but still, it's less crap to end up in our landfills.

I still prefer physical media. I like knowing that I OWN the product, and I don't simply have a license to rent the product. I like being able to swap games/movies/music with friends, lend stuff, borrow stuff, buy used stuff...

I like knowing that I can still enjoy these products without requiring a larger hard drive or a faster Internet (or any Internet at all).

Also, being able to see my collections on a shelf makes it a bit more difficult to "double dip" by mistake...between GoG, Humble Bundle, and Steam, I've accidentally made a few multiple purchases It's really hard to keep track of all of that stuff.

I really don't care for DRM, either. I have some things I got on Amazon Music, but I never listen to them because I can't (easily) get them out of there.

But I do like that streaming services make it much easier to watch TV series. Some of them can be really expensive on DVD, and span tons and tons of discs...I can't even imagine collecting some of them on VHS. I also like that they remember where you left off.

But a lot of services are dropping that kind of stuff in favor of "original content", so I still find myself seeking out some of the series that aren't available anymore, or never were. I'm still on the lookout for Total Recall: 2070, but at this rate I think I'm just going to have to be content with my downloaded copy... ¬_¬

Nothing lasts forever.

Convenience is the reason, pure and simple.

Vinyl does seem to be making a sort of "comeback" . However, how many of those new vinyl records today are pressed from digital vs. analog recordings? I still have a fairly large number of records in my music collection (hundreds) and all of them are from analog recordings. That makes sense to me.

Buying a vinyl record today pressed from a digital recording makes absolutely no sense to me. A person would gain nothing audibly from listening to be digitally recorded vinyl record vs. listening to a CD and instead would be losing audio quality with pops, cracks, hisses.

It's easier to appropriate the wealth of a society when that wealth is in digital rather than physical assets. This is the ultimate reason and it saddens me too.

I used to attend RPG events like GENCON while dragging one of those two-wheeled carts stacked with three or four milk-crates full of gaming material. The last gaming convention that I attended would not allow this, unless you were delivering the books to a vendor's stall. Gamers had all of their materials on iPads, smartphones, and thumb-drives (for their laptops).

Yeah, it's more convenient, but cracking open the Dungeon Master's Guide is still what signifies the beginning of a D&D game for me.

Doesn't sound nearly as fun if I can't lose a pencil or two in the cushions.

All good things must come to an end