# A change in how we consume media?



## Brian G Turner (May 22, 2014)

My daughter enjoyed the songs on Disney's Frozen. So I asked if she wanted to buy the album.

"No, I can just listen to it on YouTube."

That made me wonder - are we undergoing a major change in how we consume media?

For example, why "own" an album, when you can just stream the songs you like from YouTube, or other online services - without charge?

Was going to buy some old TV series on DVD - Roseanne, The Cosby Show, Home Improvement - then found they're now officially available via YouTube.

We no longer need to own them. The providers earn their income instead from advertising.

Is this way of consuming media going mainstream?


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## Jo Zebedee (May 22, 2014)

My kids live on You tube, but they still buy dvds and the odd cd. But mostly they just youtube/music channel it.


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## Moonbat (May 22, 2014)

Sonia & I watch loads of TV series, but now we have Netflix we are able to pick up old ones and watch them through, it isn't quite free but it is a different way to consuming them. 
The amount of different digital things I am now signed up to, Ultraviolet and Blinkbox to name a couple, there's spotify and some other music ones. The only reason we buy physical copies of music is so I can listen to them in the car, but I expect soon my car will play streamed music (well not my car, but other newer nicer cars). I haven't bought a newspaper in years (except when Lego comes free with it - although I missed out on the recent daily mail deals) I read most of my books digitally (although these are paid for) and then there is really only films that we still buy copies of, although we have watched plenty on Netflix and I'm sure things like snagfilms have loads for us to see (not sure how good the films are though)
In a world where the media we consume is not bought in any physical form by us it has to change the way that the creators of the media get paid for it, advertising is a kind of painful, annoying, blunderbuss approach but it is a tried and tested method so I expect it to continue.


The advertising is getting more specific, I wondered today how much my car is worth, so I tried to check it out on webuyanycar.com but they wanted me to sign in so I backed out of it and checked some equivalent models on autotrader, then as I watched the new Paloma Faith video on Youtube (I have bought the CD album but wanted to check out the video for 'I just can't rely on you') I got advert that cover the bottom of the screen - not the intro 20sec adverts that you can skip, but the ones that bring up a box that you need to close with the x to see what it was blocking - for finding out how much my car is worth. It's not news to us that our google searches are kept and used to direct advertising towards us, but sometimes it does annoy me when a whimsical search then affects the ads I'll see for the next few weeks.


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## Jo Zebedee (May 22, 2014)

I'm afraid I remain a luddite, though, and buy a daily paper and resolutely only read paper books - I get tired being on screen all day.


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (May 22, 2014)

Well, it does clear up a lot of clutter, to be honest, and makes things less likely to be lost.


That being said, there are many media trends I am not going for so much...such as the way Apple completely forced Adobe out of the mobile market, the fact that touchscreen is increasingly appearing to be the only way to do things anymore, that kind of thing. I far, far prefer mouse and keyboard...and to be honest, if not hard copies of programs, then at least programs I don't have to pay more than once for to be able to use correctly. This last one, admittedly, mostly pertains to games, but Apple's App Store, to me, is just a hideous exploitation idea...


Youtube isn't a bad medium if it can be taken on its own...the original idea was good. It was Google's buyout and interference that ruined it, and many private channels are getting shafted over things, but that is another topic.


What I personally think needs to actually happen, is for producers-yes, I said producers, not publishers, not endorsers, none of that crap-to pretty much follow in the way of Netflix, but privately. No third party, like Netflix or Youtube. That way, things are kept nice and clean in home, no need for investor interference, or at least, minimal investor interference, no middle man cutting a chunk of profit for his own hand, which can keep prices to a minimum for the consumers and still have the digital media distribution for home use convenience.


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## Foxbat (May 23, 2014)

I still buy a daily paper. I still buy albums. I still buy DVDs (particularly of hard-to-find movies) and still buy books (despite owning two kindles)

I know I'm somewhat neolithic by today's tech standards but I need something I can hold up and say _'this is what I spent my money on'_. As for Youtube - can't abide advertising getting in my way, don't care if it allows the organisation to exist and, therefore, use it perhaps once in a very blue moon.

P.S. I'm with Karn...much prefer mouse/keyboard.


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## hopewrites (May 23, 2014)

Its changed the way I go about buying what I buy at least.
I will preview a thing for free, or as free as I can, before deciding to buy. If I love it enough to not want to risk being without it should service go down or it being removed to make room for other things (netflix, for example will rotate through what it has available and more than once I've gone to watch something on their streaming service that is no longer available there) then I will buy a copy. But all my movies have to have as many special features as inhumanly possible.


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## Mouse (May 23, 2014)

I don't have enough money for a fancy iPad or iPod or whatever else these gadgets are. I listen to music in my car. My car has a CD player (it's the same one I've had in all my cars - I take it with me because I can't afford to buy a new one and I can't afford to buy the type of car which comes with a CD player already in it). So, I _do_ buy albums. I'll either buy the physical CD or the MP3 version - whichever's cheapest. I picked up a hundred blank CDs from work for free (because they had the wrong printing on them) and then save my MP3s onto them, so I can listen to music in my car.


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (May 23, 2014)

Foxbat said:


> I still buy a daily paper. I still buy albums. I still buy DVDs (particularly of hard-to-find movies) and still buy books (despite owning two kindles)
> 
> I know I'm somewhat neolithic by today's tech standards but I need something I can hold up and say _'this is what I spent my money on'_. As for Youtube - can't abide advertising getting in my way, don't care if it allows the organisation to exist and, therefore, use it perhaps once in a very blue moon.
> 
> P.S. I'm with Karn...much prefer mouse/keyboard.





If you don't care for advertising, Fox, then Adblock is a good feature to use for Chrome and Firefox. Ads are annoying, I will grant, and unscrupulous, but they are easy enough to deal with on a PC.

Less so on an iPad...again, something at the fault of Apple. Controlling bastards that they are...


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## Parson (May 23, 2014)

*Brian, *we seem to chasing the hare around the bush here. In answer to your question: yes! unequivocally we are changing the way we use media. Even this thread will tell that much. People who don't stream or YouTube, call themselves "Luddites." That pretty much tells it right there. 

So far there is an "arms race" to see how "producers" of electronic media can continue to be paid and "consumers" of that same media to see how they can obtain their pleasures for free. 

The final chapter has yet to be written here. (Pun intended.)


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## ratsy (May 23, 2014)

I sometimes miss the way it used to be. Going to the video store to get a VHS on a friday night was often the highlight of the week. I loved as a teenager going to HMV and browsing the Cd's. This was all before Netflix, youtube, and Video on Demand. You couldn't order tv shows online or record your fav shows with a click. Imagine if you missed that crucial friends episode!!! you'd have to wait for a re-run...OMG!!! 

I am kind of at that cusp of technology. I'm 33 and graduated in '98. We didn't even burn CD's yet in high school so I didn't grow up with it. If there is an old movie you want to watch now...I don't even know how to find it without buying it. My wife buys music on iTunes which is cool since I can transfer it to my Galaxy and listen in my office. But since I don't have an itunes account I often find myself just listening to Songza for tunes. 

Brian, thanks for pointing out that you can watch full episodes on Youtube. I had no clue. I honestly never spend time on that site. I told my wife about it and she wants to watch Blossom and we found it! Classic. 

I did burn all of my cd's before I moved last year and gave some co-workers their pick of the cds before I tossed them. I took all my DVD's and put them in binders and tossed the cases. Other than my books (which i still buy in a physical form) I don't like to have 'things'. 

But technology has a firm grip on us all. Most of us spend all day in front of a computer (9 hours a day at work, then if I feel up for sitting on my butt, more at home to write for a bit) I couldn't even imagine having to do my job with out computers. My brain can hardly fathom how it was done prior. So its a catch 22 sometimes.

Just my friday rant


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## Mouse (May 23, 2014)

Ah ratsy, you've just reminded me of going into Wizard and renting a video and buying a bag of penny sweets that the guy behind the counter used to count out with his non-gloved, sweaty hand.


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## ratsy (May 23, 2014)

Mouse, that is a gross memory.haha. Yeah video stores were the best! I could spend hours just wandering in them. I actually worked for Blockbuster for around 3 months a long time ago when I first moved out of home.


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## hopewrites (May 23, 2014)

now you mention it, I think movie rental places started changing the way I look at owning media before I got entirely hooked on the net.
we had an account at the one accros the street that allowed us to have two movies out at any given time for a set price per month. I remember dashing across the (non-busy) street to change out the movies two or three times a day. If there was something I was always picking up when nothing else sounded good, I knew it was something I should just give in and buy.
Now I do the same thing, but without having to dash across the street or talk to a clerk or stand in line. (Or get out of my pjs or worry that the store is closed)


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## Parson (May 23, 2014)

(Sigh!) This thread really makes me feel old!!!! Video stores, CD's and DVD's were all part of my adult life that just blew through. I wonder if I'll live long enough to say that about YouTube, Twitter, etc. Everything changes except the fact that everything changes.


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## Ursa major (May 23, 2014)

Parson said:


> (Sigh!) This thread really makes me feel old!!!! Video stores, CD's and DVD's were all part of my adult life that just blew through. I wonder if I'll live long enough to say that about YouTube, Twitter, etc. Everything changes except the fact that everything changes.


Join the club. And it also reminds me how things change at different speeds for different technologies. 

In the early-to-mid nineteen nineties, I went to get my hair cut after returning from a meeting in the US (Palo Alto) where the company for which I worked, together with companies from Germany, Australia and the US, discussed what we might be able to put together for that year's Western Cable Show** in Anaheim, highlighting the delivery of video services to the home. In the inevitable chat with the hairdresser, he was explaining how, when a group of his friends wanted to rent a film but didn't know what was available, one of them would be sent to the video shop and would use their mobile phone to relay what was in stock. 

To me, who'd only really seen mobiles being used for business, this was a revelation, showing that mobile phones were going to be bigger than anyone had imagined, because the end user was using them in ways that someone in a lab or marketing department had never bothered thinking about. 

Meanwhile, nothing resembling a streaming service or a home delivery system capable of carrying it, appeared for ages. Even a decade later, a couple of Megs for download was being seen as difficult to provide, not because the technology wasn't there (or on the near horizon), but because no-one could work out how to pay for providing such "huge" bandwidth to individual residences.

Now look where we are. (Even though I get 21.6 Mbit/s (max) over copper, the ISP keeps trying to sell me fibre access.) 


** - The Western Cable Show (d.2003) doesn't even seem to have its own Wiki entry, which just shows how things have moved on.


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## TheDustyZebra (May 23, 2014)

Ursa major said:


> To me, who'd only really seen mobiles being used for business, this was a revelation, showing that mobile phones were going to be bigger than anyone had imagined, because the end user was using them in ways that someone in a lab or marketing department had never bothered thinking about.




Yes, it's not a big leap at all from there to seeing how useful it would be if you could call your spouse who is in the store and add milk to the grocery list.

Which must have really put a crimp in the works for someone I know who used to actually call the grocery store to have them page her husband and make him come to the phone so she could tell him something (and make sure he was actually there and not cheating on her). When she had to call his cell phone instead, she couldn't be sure where he really was.

I don't really watch things on YouTube, except for the occasional funny video that's linked from somewhere else. I did get Amazon Prime at Christmas, and have watched a fair amount of stuff there. I do still buy DVDs on occasion, but not really CDs. I still have all the CDs, but I don't listen to them much except on road trips. However, I did just get a USB turntable for Mother's Day, and I'm happy to be able to listen to my records again and to record them onto my computer. I do listen to music sometimes on the computer.

So yes, I suppose most of my media has switched over to computer.

(Thank you to those who said they still get a daily newspaper -- I work for one, and it's good to know we're still slightly useful!)


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## Parson (May 24, 2014)

Ursa major said:


> To me, who'd only really seen mobiles being used for business, this was a revelation, showing that mobile phones were going to be bigger than anyone had imagined, because the end user was using them in ways that someone in a lab or marketing department had never bothered thinking about.



Circa 84 I had a telephone repair guy tell me about "cell phones." I said "There will come a day when we will all have one in our pocket." But..... Did I buy stock in telephone companies, or emerging cell phone businesses.  You know the answer.


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## hopewrites (May 25, 2014)

yeah my mom still resists owning and using a cell phone. I think because she enjoys giving rip to "young kids" who interrupt* her to respond to texts (because "no one" calls on them now a days)


*or the "even more impolite" people who *dont* interrupt her to respond.


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