Do You Hoard Media You Can't Play?

Hands up if you have a collection of vinyl, or even cassettes and don’t have the decks and equipment to play them on. Maybe you have VHS tapes, but no VHS player, or even eight track tapes and no eight track player.

A survey by UK electronics retailer Maplin has found that UK men still have their collections of older media in their homes, even though they don’t have the equipment to play these disappearing media formats. Some 45% still have cassettes, but no cassette deck, 47% vinyl singles and LPs but no turntable. Again some 20% have photographic slides but no viewer or projector.

However, more interesting is that some 75% admitted to having collections of music they never play and photographs and files they never look at. Are we a nation of hoarders, or do we just see equipment as a disposable and content as something we must keep just in case? Is it just that we all spent huge sums and time building up these libraries that reflected our taste at the time and do not want to let go of those memories.

Maplin also found that over 66% of those surveyed would like to be able to transfer old stuff to an up-todate format but lacked the time or the know-how.

In a few years time will we be saying the same about those ebooks we bought and were tied to devices or heavily restricted by DRM? Colin Powell has openly admitted to buying more ebooks than he has read and again once read how many every reread the book?

Contrary to the survey, we are pleased we have a significant vinyl collection and the equipment to enjoy it on, we do have cassette decks but no longer have cassette tapes. We have ripped the vast majority of our CD music library to digital files, but now have a Laptop, which like many, came with no CD although we do have an external one. We own some VHS and DVD tapes but also have VHS and DVD players. We also have a significant library of physical books and some Kindle ebooks which can be played on many devices. However, the majority of our media library is rarely played. Only last night my wife spent time photographing old college photos so we could post them on facebook for a reunion.

This useful survey highlights a number of interesting points about all media and our usage and archive of it in a digital age.

The first point would seriously question why we continue buy digital media and why it’s not made available on-demand, on subscription or on a pay to play basis? This opportunity is why LoveFilm, Netflix, Spotify, Pandora and others have huge potential to change our culture.

Secondly, any file or media that is tied to a specific technology is destined to have a limited life. This is fact and the early media files that were tied to a service, or device, are now potentially dead files. However, whilst they are still current we should be able to resell the files through an authentication broker which not only creates further value but could also generate new revenues for artists.

Thirdly, although upgrade services and devices exist these need to be better promoted by retailers and the industry itself, who could benefit from the improved customer contact and after-sales service.

We live in a market which is geared to forcing us to re-invest in technology on a cyclical basis. To buy the latest, smartest and hippest technology and throw out the old. Many reinvested in their music when the CD replaced vinyl and their VHS videos when DVD arrived but that retail trick can only be done so many times and once media is capture digitally it’s often easier to transfer it to new formats. Perhaps the biggest threat to digital files being upward compatible today is not devices but DRM?

Who Is Recording What Behind Those Glasses?

Why did VHS win in its infamous war with Betamax? The answer was largely down to the introduction of the first VHS camera. Why did that make a difference? It enabled the pornography market to create cheaper, more edgy films and importantly enabled amateur pornography to flourish. This is turn created demand and demand reduced prices and being able to capture film became as important as watching films

Pornography has always been at the cutting edge of technology and it is now interesting to hear of their obvious interest in the forthcoming Google Glass. The technology will enable users; to capture close and intimate hands free action, upload it live and even for some users to watch their pornography dreams whilst they do whatever they wish. An Android app store MiKandi is already planning to make content to watch on the new technology.

Just like the early VHS cameras made us all film directors and actors so the new technology promises to take that a stage further and free our hands and make everything filmable. Everyone you see and meet could be filming us on devices that are ‘connected’ to the world.

However, trying to ban or curtail the use of the new technology might be like trying to ban people using mobile phones. The technology itself is only going to get cheaper, smaller and even less detectable. We are entering the world where everyone could be potentially filming and uploading images at any time. The question is not how we control pornography, but how we protect civil liberties and privacy.

Once the butler peeked through the keyhole to glimpse at what was happening behind closed doors, perhaps soon he will merely be able to film through the door itself and instantly stream it to the world. 

VHS RIP

We used to talk fondly about Sony Walkman tapes, eight track tapes and the Betamax format. Now the eject button is being finally applied to the VHS tape that spawned the likes of Blockbuster. After some 30 years of service those black boxes are finally ending in the technology graveyard that beckons all in time. The video tape heralded a new era where Hollywood classics and latest releases could be rented and watched at home. It didn’t destroy but stimulated cinema and the movie market and in 2006 the last major Hollywood movie "A History of Violence" was released on VHS.

Not only did VHS transform movies enabling fast forward, pause and instant replay it also was the first real TV recorder enabling everyone to not miss that must see program.

VHS has now been taken over by the smaller and tidier DVD and recently this too has been threatened by the new upstart, Blu-ray. VHS rentals were overtaken by DVD in 2003 and by the end of 2005, DVD sales were over $22 billion whilst VHS had slumped to $1.5 billion. Kugler was the last major supplier who still managed to sell some 4 million VHS tapes over the last two years but finally called it a day in October this year. Many predict that the DVD will be obsolete in 3 years but the life expectancy of the Blu-ray is still in question.

So as owners slowly convert their libraries to new formats or buy again we witness once again the ridiculous library model that we have all grow up with. It doesn’t make sense in today’s high bandwidth, permanently logged on world to have to own media but we still do it. Why do we need to own ebooks, video tapes, music CDs and other media? Why not just rent on demand it would make a lot more sense.