The world is shifting into digital gear at a rapid pace and everyone is racing to stay ahead.
Video games, eBooks, music, movies, and TV shows.
You name it, there’s probably a digital market for it.
And while digital isawesomein many ways, it definitely isn’t perfect.
Indie games through Steam, indie music through Soundcloud, indie eBooks through Amazon, etc.
As an aspiring indie myself, this is a trend I can get behind 100 percent.
Plus, digital media is generally more convenient.
Nobody can argue with that.
But is that reason enough to jump ship and abandon your CDs and DVDs?
Maybe, maybe not.
Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons.
You might find that it’s actually better to wait.
This isn’t true when you make a digital purchase.
In other words, you’relicensing the content.
There’s no physical medium to own.
Are you comfortable paying for something you won’t own?
For example, can you sell something that you don’t own?
Think about the used media market.
You buy a certain book, DVD, or board game.
You list it on eBay (or aseller-friendly eBay alternative) and sell it for some extra cash.
Seems pretty mundane, right?
It’s a win-win situation.
You walk away with the recuperated value of whatever it is that you sold.
The buyer walks away with whatever he or she wanted but at a discounted price.
Butyou can’t sell digital filesbecause of the licensing terms.
That means that every digital purchase you make is a 100 percent sunk cost.
You cannot extract any value from it.
You also can’t buy used goodies from others at reduced prices.
It’s effectively “full price or nothing” now.
Upon death, your access to all of that stuff is legally revoked.
The bad news is that we’re not done yet.
Think about physical media.
That’s how we have always done things, and it works.
But digital switches that up.
How would you lend a digital file to a friend?
The obvious method is tocopy it and send it over to them.
Unfortunately, this kind of file-sharing counts as Internet piracy – even if you don’t use file-sharing networks!
We can argue whether or notpiracy is a good thing, but the law is the law.
Well, what if yougiverather thancopythe file?
So, lending is out of the question unless you also lend your account or rig.
Unfortunately, companies tend to prohibit the sharing of accounts and devices for this very reason.
Data Storage Costs Money
Okay, that’s enough about digital ownership.
There are other downsides that you should be aware of, such as the nature of digital storage itself.
When you buy a board game or book, you only need physical space.
But when we move into full digital territory, something strange happens.
What about Internet bandwidth?
For those of us who havebandwidth caps on Internet usage,we’re actually payingthreetimes.
For example, consider malware.
It can be surprisingly easy tocatch a malicious virusthat wipes out your hard drive.
When that happens, you could say “Goodbye” to your digital library.
Are you prepared to lose everything when you wake up one morning to a dead hard drive?
All of that content you paid for is suddenly made unavailable and you’re left high and dry.
And if you want tokeep digital backups, that’smorespace that you should probably pay for.
I’m not saying that physical discs are impervious to damage.
Yes, discs can snap in half.
Yes, your house could burn down and consume all of your physical media.
This may or may not be a big deal to you, but it’s a point worth considering.
Physical vs. Digital: Who Wins?
Despite all of these downsides, I think most of us probably prefer digital over physical.
