For the love of print media

This piece was originally written for and published in Disposable Parts Edition 1, a Seattle based full-size, full-color arts and culture magazine designed and edited by my partner Angel Cruz and I. DM @disposable.parts on Instagram to purchase a copy.

Having been born in 2000, I, like most current young adults, grew up during a turning point for media distribution. My childhood was before the true cultural shift, more of a transitional period between analog’s prominence and digital’s complete takeover. I don’t have any lasting memories of Blockbuster, but my parents had a cabinet full of DVDs that were our prime form of entertainment before signing up for Netflix on our Wii when I was 11. Growing up (and still now) I had bookcases full of physical books, underlined and dog-eared to the point of no return, but was gifted an e-reader (a Barnes and Noble ‘Nook’) when I was 12 as the rise of the Kindle took over the book market. Living in this period where technological innovation was (and still is) the growing priority and the battle between analog and digital continues to seem less and less fruitful for team analog, I’ve witnessed the steady fall of multiple forms of physical media. DVD sales dropped 86% between 2006 and 2019 (1). Multiple magazines that were once prominent in distributing news and culture have completely closed, undergone massive layoffs or ceased to publish print editions. In more recent news, Best Buy has announced that they will no longer sell physical media online or in stores. The relevance of physical media to the general population seemingly continues to deplete as technology grows more advanced, more streaming services are introduced, a new app or tool is created to replace something we once held in our hands. What does this mean for how we attain media, as well as how we process and engage with it?

I will admit that there are notable benefits to accessing media digitally rather than physically. It’s convenient, and for a country that is working an average of 40 or more hours a week with incomparable pay and higher bills, along with families, commutes, and every other fun responsibility, there’s nothing wrong with needing to streamline our tasks in order to feel less overwhelmed. Attaining our media digitally provides us with more options than was fathomable before, opening us to more resources to expand our tastes and expose ourselves to different perspectives. Smaller producers of most types of media typically cannot afford the costs of producing a physical product. And, of course, digital media is technically less wasteful, as we now aren’t using plastic casing for a single disk, or printing millions of copies of a magazine 12 months a year. There is validity in choosing to access your media digitally, and while the push for digital has its downsides that I’ll get into, I cannot deny the nuance of change, the varying ways that our lives can be impacted by a shift in culture and lifestyle. However, I don’t believe that the draw for innovation and convenience should lead to the complete eradication of physical media, especially when the push toward going fully digital is being spearheaded by multi-billion dollar companies. 

We know about the rising prices of streaming, the increased volume of ads on the services that promised us convenience and an alternative to cable television. We also know how annoying it is when a streaming service takes away a piece of media we love and cherish (I still mourn the removal of That 70's Show from Netflix), which raises a concern about ownership of media. What does it mean to own a piece of media online? You can buy it digitally, have it downloaded to your account, but what if that account gets deleted? What if your purchase itself is deleted from the platform? We may still retain ownership of our belongings, but when a belonging is not in our physical ownership and is still under the control of a company and its website, is it really our own? How do we own a movie, or a book, or an article that inspired us, educated us, moved us, when it’s still essentially in the hands of a company that can take it from us at their will? You don’t need to OWN a piece of media to have a meaningful relationship with it, but having the art and culture that shapes us only accessible through digital resources limits out ability to engage with it. Most importantly in this point (to me) is the concern that when an online resource decides that people don’t like something enough (not enough engagement based on their stats), they can decide whether or not it is accessible to the general public. They can wipe it from their platform, and then, if we reach a point where we no longer have physical modes to access a piece of media...where does it go? Is it gone, completely inaccessible to the public? An example of this is the Willow remake, produced and released exclusively for Disney+ but removed from the platform only six months after its release as a “cost-cutting measure” (2). Sure, I myself didn’t watch Willow, but fans of the show have expressed disappointment in being completely restricted from accessing the show. When does this become a level of censorship? When does it become an issue of companies deciding that, because not enough people like it or other powers that be don’t like it, they can deem it completely inaccessible? 

Digital media also has its disadvantages for the artists and creators that utilize online platforms. While Spotify execs have made $250 million in stock just this year (3), only 30% of artists on their platform make 10k a year on streaming royalties, and it takes at least a million streams on Spotify to only make about $4,000 (4). Meanwhile, sales of CDs and vinyl, which usually have better sound quality in general, typically provide artists with about a 60% profit margin (5). So while we as the consumer are being granted the luxury of convenience, artists are now having to work harder to make less money for their art online. And then, of course, there’s...the AI conversation...We don’t need to fully get into this; there are plenty of conversations by people that are far more educated than I am on this topic, and I unfortunately think this will be a talking point for years to come. But we can’t ignore it. The integrity of a piece of art and the respect and ownership of the person that created it is now dangerously at question with the issue of AI utilizing resources without a creator’s permission, and I’m disappointed that companies that claim to strive for innovation and advancement are using that intention to disrespect the content that built their platforms in the first place. This issue is making it increasingly difficult for artists to feel comfortable sharing their work online, but when you need to do so to build or maintain your career, and physical resources are dropping like flies...what are we supposed to do? 

While digital is at the forefront of culture, vintage analog has seen a resurgence over at least the last 17 years with an increased demand for vinyl and film photography and a rising romanticization of early 2000’s technology by young people that either never experienced the heyday of these retro objects or lived at the tail end of their popularity. Prominent movie directors Edgar Wright, Guillermo Del Toro, Christopher Nolan and more have recently promoted physical media and “a version you can buy...so no evil streaming service can come steal it from you” (6). At times, I feel like I’m witnessing another Enlightenment era, where advocates for science, exploration and innovation butt heads with the Romantics--artists and scholars that support “traditional” (for the time) ways of creating and engaging with life and art. It’s fascinating to watch us attempt to navigate the many gray areas that come with change. Young people are the prime target for marketing new technology, and yet we are reaching for seemingly archaic tools used by previous generations. Are we engaging with increasingly obsolete forms of physical media because they fit our niche retro 8Os/9Os/y2k/whatever aesthetic? Or is it because we’re looking for something deeper?

Now to REALLY get on my soapbox. Here is why I, personally, enjoy engaging with physical media. We’ve already established that when it comes to small artists, specifically musicians in this case, you are often directly supporting them financially when you buy a CD or a vinyl from them, rather than streaming online. Additionally, when you engage with a piece of media from the past, you get to witness a piece of history, the way that generations before our own entertained themselves and the different techniques in craftsmanship that creators utilized. Old magazines demonstrate that era’s styles in graphic design, photography and journalism. Vintage books feature previous trends in cover design and typography. Trailers on a VHS show us how movies were marketed and what movies were being promoted at the time. An old unedited version of a Star Wars movie will still showcase puppets rather than CGI. Through engaging with a piece of media in the way it was distributed when it was produced, we get to step into the past for a moment and learn about our creative predecessors. 

One of my predominant reasons for enjoying physical media is the attention and care I get to give a piece when it is the ONLY thing in front of me. I’ve found my attention is slowly pulled in a different direction, keeping me from genuinely engaging with the intricacies of a movie, book, article or album when it’s on my device that also has annoying notifications, an addictive pull to social media and so, so many options of what I can do. I think this ties into the greater issue of our changing attention spans and lives moving more quickly. Researchers have already found that reading a book physically helps with reading comprehension and deeper learning (7), and I feel as though, for myself, that sentiment applies to other forms of physical media. My comprehension and connection to a piece feels deeper when it is not attached to anything else, when I don’t have to force myself to resist the draw to millions of other options. I have to be slower, more mindful with my absorption. As editor Shanté Cosme says for Coveteur, “print has a languorous feeling to it, and I think that’s a good thing. Magazines should encourage slow, thoughtful reading...They should be brimming with stimulating images and ideas that invite reflection and encourage close reading” (8).

I believe in the value of holding in our hands a piece of art that has shaped or influenced us in some way. I enjoy the act of collecting objects that feel like a part of me, learning how to take care of them, putting them on display in my home so guests can gather clues about my interests through them. When an object is given the time and attention needed to take care of it, it can have an surprisingly long lifespan (think about how many 100-something year old books exist currently), and we get to bestow a certain undivided reverence upon the intricacies of the piece. The attention and care put into every detail of a piece of media is indicative of HOW MUCH passion the artist has for their art, so much that they wanted to make sure every aspect of it, down to its casing, fits their vision. I believe that this is partially lost when it is just part of an endless list of other things on our phone. When Angel and I interviewed Seattle band Tongues in late August, I asked them about the lyric book for the CD of their newest EP, Feral Hands. The lead singer lit up while explaining the detail that went into making it, that they did a special photoshoot for the sole purpose of the lyric book, and that as the lyricist it was deeply important to them for their listeners to be able to immerse themselves in their lyrics in a special way. I would not have known about this special aspect of their project in the first place if I hadn’t bought the CD and given attention to the lyric book—if I had just streamed the EP instead. 

This is not an anti-digital media stance. Digital access to media has opened the possibility of learning, engaging with media and making art at a lower cost to those that were once not granted the privilege of doing so. Technology can be, and is, awesome. And tech companies and streaming services are not the first to try to take and manipulate art, the people that make it and the masses that consume it. Art has always been desired by scummy, greedy people that wish to make money off the inspiration and impact art has on the masses, and we will always do what we can to counteract them because we know it is so much more than monetary gain. It is how we live our lives, how we express the complexities of human experience, how we connect.

This is also not to say that physical media doesn’t also have its limits. You can’t listen to vinyl without a record player; you have to have the space for books; you need a VCR to watch VHS. But I think that can mean that when you buy something physical, it’s valuable to you. It’s special enough that you can make space for it, and you are willing to buy another tool to use it. Since we are still standing on the precipice of going fully digital, we can still prevent the complete elimination of physical media by choosing what we want to retain physically, and we can learn how to properly take care of it so that it lasts. We can have our cake and eat it, too.