Last week, we talked about the death of a medium that never really took off. Now, we discuss the death of a market that suffered another death: obsoletion. Sony announced that they are getting out of the recordable blu-ray business. For over twenty years, Sony sold recordable media and the United States ate it up. Now, before you freak out, this is only affects Blu-ray recorders with a built-in Blu-ray player.
Now, Sony claims they will remain in creating physical media like movies. Physical media has been on a downturn for the last decade. However, physical media seems to be on an uptick. I recently watched a YouTube video about the slow comeback of CDs. Since I moved to Arizona, I have two places that sell records, movies, books, and other stuff. Bookmans is a collectors paradise. They sell second hand books, movies, video games, music, and comics. It is amazing. The other is Zia, which is like Amoeba back in Los Angeles.
It makes sense to pair this with the physical media downfall, but that obscures a major factor: relevance. Much in the way of things dying off comes from market conditions. As someone who has seen various forms of media die off before, it isn’t that big of a deal.
The End of Recordable Blu-ray isn’t the Death of Media
When I was in high school, my brother had a rack system. It was a cabinet that contained a turntable, dual cassette deck, radio, and a CD player. This allowed me to make mix tapes using songs off the radio, vinyl, other cassettes, or music from our burgeoning CD collection. But as cassettes gave way to CDs, recording methods change.
I never saw thought pieces about cassette tapes going away. I was born during the final years of 8-track tapes. Personally, I think the demise of the CD burner was the most painful. Many laptops now don’t even come with a CD tray.
The real demise of recordable blu-ray was three fold. One, it was too expensive. About a couple hundred bucks for a component. It wasn’t too long before they ended up becoming standard in PCs. Once that happened, most people no longer needed to purchase them. Two, improved internet speeds. With higher internet speeds, the quality was better than VHS or even DVDs.
The Biggest Reason isn’t Spoken About
Piracy is the third. This was a side effect from improved internet speeds. You could download higher quality version and it was still better than streaming. Physical media is much more improved over streaming. 4K on Netflix doesn’t hold a candle to an actual 4K disc.
Another side effect from high internet speeds was the creation of online libraries. Using services like Plex, allowed you to watch movies from your PC without a disc. With the exception of the first reason, the rest came from high internet speeds. Much of the gatekeeping has been busted that allowed us to view movies by other means. We gave away quality for convenience.
It is important to remember that markets ebb and flow. If companies start seeing a rise in blu-ray players and media being sold, they will make more. Like everything, you over saturate the market and people stop buying. Since there won’t be anything in higher quality for a while, I don’t see actual physical media going away soon. But owning it will keep them around.
