With all them services and hardwares out there, is it possible to go cold turkey on physical media? Why make the digital switch? And if you do, is the selection good enough?
It's heavy, I'm lazy
My generation is the first to have grown up with the internet and dirt cheap flights. I'm glad, since these two pillars of modern life has given me and others greater flexibility when deciding where to live. Moving to a new place, sometimes in new countries, has almost exclusively been a positive experience. However, it is not without drawbacks. Don't worry, I'll save my rant about British banks for another blog post.
One downside is the practical limit to the amount of stuff that can be hauled between flats, especially when moving internationally. While it might appear to be an insignificant detail it is having a big impact on how I think. All that stuff gathered through the years has started to become more of a burden than an asset. Every time the moving van is loaded there are more books, DVDs, games and CDs to fill it with, many of which have already been read, seen, finished or ripped to mp3. What previously would be a common impulse buy is now a major decision on par with "should I get that vasectomy from the village butcher or not?"
With yet another international move coming up the idea to go cold turkey on physical media has popped up once again, sandwiched in-between thoughts such as "What did I have for lunch today?" and "How you do spell the back-to-the-future-esque surname of that dark haired woman in Dirty projectors?".
Digitally yours
Enough waffling. This is a quick experiment to see if going completely digital would be possible for me, your mileage may vary. I have compiled a list of books, films, games and albums that I will try to download, stream or by other means legally consume without buying the physical product.
The upsides to going digital are obvious, besides the mentioned reduction of shelf space required it promises instantish gratification. I want to listen to that song now, not next week when I have time to go to a record shop or when the delivery will arrive. Then there's the ease of use aspect, mp3 files for example can be played on almost any device anywhere these days, not just the livingroom stereo. Same for many video formats, I was surprised to see that my dad's new kitchen TV could play Xvid files from USB sticks.
There are unfortunately downsides too, such as DRM and other lock-in techniques.
Music
Music is the easiest of the four. Since it compresses well it has been a solved problem for quite some time, although mainly illegally so. 10 years later the legal options are catching up.
I picked out the top 15 tracks from different artists in my 3 month chart at
Last.fm. I then simply searched for all of them and counted the results. If I only found the unremixed or original version of a track I marked that as half a point.
The tracks
The Radio Dept. – Heaven's on Fire
Jonathan Johansson – Aldrig ensam
LCD Soundsystem – Dance Yrself Clean
Noir Désir – Le Vent Nous Portera
Phosphorescent – The Mermaid Parade
Foals – Spanish Sahara
Surfer Blood – Take It Easy
Familjen – När planeterna stannat
Stina Nordenstam – I Dream of Jeannie
Real Estate – Fake Blues
The National – Bloodbuzz Ohio
Teenage Fanclub – The World'll Be OK (Alternative version)
She & Him – In the Sun
Teddybears ft. Eve – Rocket Scientist
Radiohead – Nude (Holy Fuck Remix)
Results
Spotify - 70%
iTunes - 86%
Amazon MP3 - 76%
Hype Machine - 80%
Combined result - 97%
Altogether a decent result, what some services lacked the others made up for. This might just work.
Games - Xbox 360
My platforms of choice are the Xbox 360 and PC. I picked out five fairly big and recent titles on each platform that have turned up on my gaming radar (also known as Gadar™).
Battlefield: Bad company 2
Call of duty: Modern warfare 2
Just cause 2
Alan Wake
Red dead redemption
Results
There is no need for a graph since the one place to buy these games online, Xbox Live Marketplace, did not have a single one of them when I checked. Disastrous! It mostly contains older titles. Does anyone know the reason why? If there is one thing iPhone apps have taught me it's that I buy lots more when it's just a click and a download away.
Games - PC
Battlefield: Bad company 2
Call of duty: Modern warfare 2
Just cause 2
Napoleon: Total War
Alien Breed: Impact
Results
Steam - 100%
Direct2drive - 20%
Combined result - 100%
Not much to say, Steam is where it's at, not much point in looking elsewhere. The newly added Mac support is also neat for those of us that have tasted the forbidden fruit.
Films
Below are 10 recent films I like. Half mainstream-ish and half foreign productions.
Youth in revolt
An Education
Zombieland
The Road
District 9
Män som hatar kvinnor / The girl with the dragon tattoo (se)
O cheiro do ralo / Drained (br)
El secreto de sus ojos / The secret in their eyes (ar)
Død snø / Dead snow (no)
Le scaphandre et le papillon / The diving bell and the butterfly (fr)
Results
iTunes - 50%
Zune - 20%
Netflix - 30%
Hulu - 0%
Voddler - 20%
CDON - 60%
Random torrent site - 100%
Combined result (legal) - 70%
Better then expected, but not great. The movies are spread out over the services making them hard to find. Is there a search engine for this stuff yet? If not, someone should build it and tell me about it. In this test I also counted those from those services not strictly available in the EU.
Sadly it is still a lot less hassle to pirate a film than to watch it legally.
Books
In my mind the big contenders are Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad and their respective book stores, but I will admit I have not done much if any research. I picked a selection of mostly work related books, since that seems to be what I make time to read.
Programming Scala (Dean Wampler, Alex Payne)
The Ruby Programming Language (David Flanagan, Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Hadoop: The Definitive Guide (Tom White)
Confessions of a public speaker (Scott Berkun)
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
Results
Amazon Kindle - 60%
iBooks - 0%
O'Reilly - 80%
Combined result - 80%
As it turns out most of what I read are O'Reilly books, so this test is quite skewed. Surprised by the lack of books in the iBooks store.
Summary
Doable but plenty of room for improvement.
The selection is lacking, especially when it comes to Xbox 360 games. Equally annoying as a customer is the need for looking through a handful of different services in order to find that one movie you want to see. Other then that both books and movies do alright. Music and PC games are the only two solid results with excellent coverage.
One can naively hope that as the content industry further feels the squeeze from piracy that they would feel inclined to actually give the customers what they want, the way they want it.
As previously mentioned I am thoroughly addicted to my iPhone. This manifests itself especially when abroad. During trips the need for information about transport, places and activities is even greater then usual. Unfortunately this greater need is efficiently suppressed by extreme roaming costs, that is, unless you get a local pay as you go SIM card with decent data rates.
