Week 10: Ownership

My experience with ownership in the digital world has mostly been towards eschewing the print or any physical copies of digital materials (such as DVDs) in favour of cloud-based solutions (e.g. e-books or TV or movies via iTunes) or streaming services.  The distinction between purchasing content via a cloud-based service and subscribing to streaming service are two leading alternatives to owning a physical print copy or copy a digital copy via a material mean (such as DVDs or CDs). I’ll explore these both in my blog post.

If I’m purchasing the music, movies, and TV that I consume, and increasingly when it comes to books, I prefer to purchase licence through a service like iTunes rather than to own a physical copy (and what being able to do with the physical copy entails). Purchasing content as licences, through a service like iTunes, offers me a better solution for managing my collections, all the while meeting my expectations to access this content (easily searchable on my computer or mobile devices). This line of thought for me is partially based on practicality and convenience.  Over the past six years, I’ve lived in six different cities/towns. Having less stuff is simply easier to move around. I’ve abandoned many DVDs in my life! I’ve haven’t felt too torn about abandoning DVDs, as my personal experience with TV or movies is to simply watch them once. This isn’t always the case, but holds true for the most part. Moreover, I find that I’ve never had a strong desire to “own” movies or music, so I don’t long for the sentimentality of physically owning copies, and what comes with that such as being able to touch or display the album or cover art.

For this reason, owning my forms of entertainment almost becomes irrelevant in lots of cases, and in large part this is due to the ease of access. Although one-time use or a time limited access have long existed in the public library setting, I view streaming services, such as Netflix or Spotify, as an enhancement of one-time or limited period use. With Spotify and other music subscription services in particular, playlists can be build, and include many of the current popular songs. I find this particular advantageous, because I like to listen to many of the “Top 40” for the few weeks that I want to and then move on to something else. It allows me to spend less money than continuously buying my current favourites, which are often no longer my favourites a few months later.  Streaming services have reduced my need own licences or physical copies to digital content. Unsurprisingly, as streaming services develop technologically and gain more users, they improve and reduce the need to “own,” either through iTunes like services or possessing a physical copy. This is definitely changing the way that we consume media, shifting approaches to copyright, and affects the socio-economic consumption of entertainment.