WIP
I am in the process working out what I find a good balance on this subject, but I am still interested in writing this idea out here!
In the post-internet age it seems we have the following, sub-optimal methods for consuming art:
- Piracy - the shameful methodology encouraged by the ignoble breed known as redditors.
- Streaming - the standard option in modern society, offering the artists fractions of a cent for our consumption and fandom.
- Digital Ownership - rarely done and available in fewer and fewer places, and often easily revoked.
- Physical Ownership - the choice of the hipster, the stylish choice that the record labels and movie studios are all too happy to exploit for profit.
Incentives
It might seem like the only reason to not pirate media is to support the creators of it, and while that is the chief reason, it’s not the only one. There’s also plenty of economic issues in the realms of media that aren’t the fault of the consumer, we shouldn’t be blaming ourselves for the evils of Universal Music, 20th Century Fox or Spotify.
For me, there’s a few reasons I love to buy to own rather than rent through streaming or piracy.
Access/Convenience
For buying digitally, access is permanent and extremely convenient. If I want to quickly download it to my phone, no more headaches trying to pirate, no more quickly paying $15 to reactivate a subscription, just simple.
For physical media, you can rip your Blu-Rays, or CDs to have digital files to access as you would for any pirated media anyway. So you can sort of maintain the best of both worlds.
Perks
For buying physically, the convenience factor falls a little but the aura factor is increased 100 fold. You have the physical manifestation of the labor of the creator, sometimes you get cool stuff like a full-size Pink Floyd Animals poster or maybe a map of San Andreas. In the case of movies, you can listen to Robert Rodriguez give you advice of creative fulfilment while commentating Spy Kids 2.
Artistry
Finally, it typically gives you a more authentic experience. If you play a game on original hardware you don’t have to worry about emulation artefacts, if you play a Blu-Ray you can watch a high-resolution movie without any compression artefacts, if you listen to a CD, you can listen to digitally lossless audio as an album in its entirety.
I like this incentive on experiencing the piece in a constrained medium closer to what the original creator intended. My consumptions of albums vs playlists/songs has risen by about 20 fold, which I’m stoked about.
Flowerworld
Would it be a blogpost if I didn’t reference flowerworld just once?
I believe that physically owning media is a way of communing with flowerworld. Instead of residing in cyberspace where all media and information is free and easily accessible, and equally disposable, I live in a world of strict limits. I treasure my collection of music on my iPod, because if I have a hankering to listen to a piece of music, I have to listen to the music available to me - or - go out and buy more. No in between.
Meaning: if I’ve bought an album, I’m listening to that shit and appreciating all its little details. Not getting 4 songs in and darting to the next thing.
Limitations
Obviously, it would be ignorant of me to suggest that everyone who is pirating media is doing so because they believe those who they are pirating the work of don’t deserve financial compensation. In my estimation, some of the major limitations preventing someone from legitimately acquiring media are:
- It’s not easily available to buy physically or digitally.
- You don’t have skrilla to blow on random new media that you want to try out.
- It’s available on streaming/subscription service, but you only want access to the one piece in question - which is not enough to justify the cost of a subscription.
I think that all three of these are reasonable to some extent or another, but the thing I run into is this: there is typically enough media to reasonably consume properly. You might not be able to find **Deltron 3030** from your local store, but you might stumble across Doctor Zhivago, which has sat on my shelf un-watched for the last few weeks.
Where I’m At
In general, I’m leaning toward buying the media physically before consuming it.
The only music I’m listening to are CDs that I own that have been ripped and stored on my iPod.
A lot of the movies and TV shows I’m watching are either DVDs or in the cinemas.
A lot of the video games that I’m playing, are discs on the original hardware (primarily PlayStation 2 at the moment).
Where I’m making exceptions
- If there’s a video game that I believe to be exceptionally influential and interesting to play, but the resale on the original release to play it is in the hundreds of dollars. I’m pirating it. All of the profit for buying these scalped collectors items are going to the collectors/resellers, not the creators anyway. Not that I’d pay $600 for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night if it went to Koji Igarashi anyway.
- I have to pay for Stan to watch the Premier League, so I’m happily re-watching TV shows off there to save me hunting down TV DVDs.
Currently, I’m not really making any exceptions other than those two, which I’m really happy about!