Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
ezst036 Admin said: ………sees strong resurgence amid physical media backlash………… https://i.imgflip.com/83im0l.png Um. Let's not act like (some) customers don't prefer the convenience of completely digital solutions. The "backlash" (incorrect terminology) would be one set of customers revolting against another set of consumers. There's a whole evolution of consumers we could recount moving from 56k, to broadband, here comes napster, here comes ipods until it results in the death of Blockbuster and eventually almost the medium itself. Reaching the logical end of its conclusion. This is a customer vs customer war. Honestly I think the customers who get bitter and they cling to their CDs and their vinyl, with antipathy toward digital solutions, are the ones who are correct here. The providers be it the Spotifys of the world or the Sonys and Microsofts of the world, those middlemen. The middlemen cannot be trusted. Reply
expired56k I think you are missing the point, people who actually enjoy music are fed up with all the licensing nonsense, decreasing quality, and many other things. Now AI is the final straw. Due to these similar issues, I also felt like I was not enjoying music like I used to. I have been going back to physical for a few years now and couldn't be happier (though to be honest, I never full left, I kept all my physical media in storage; also been buying UHD movies for many years now – same reasons). Reply
IAcidBurnI ezst036 said: https://i.imgflip.com/83im0l.png Um. Let's not act like (some) customers don't prefer the convenience of completely digital solutions. The "backlash" (incorrect terminology) would be one set of customers revolting against another set of consumers. There's a whole evolution of consumers we could recount moving from 56k, to broadband, here comes napster, here comes ipods until it results in the death of Blockbuster and eventually almost the medium itself. Reaching the logical end of its conclusion. This is a customer vs customer war. Honestly I think the customers who get bitter and they cling to their CDs and their vinyl, with antipathy toward digital solutions, are the ones who are correct here. The providers be it the Spotifys of the world or the Sonys and Microsofts of the world, those middlemen. The middlemen cannot be trusted. I don't comment here as you can obviously see but I had to for you. I can't comprehend how you can miss your mark so bad. What's this has to do with different generation of customers? This just has to do with owning your stuff. I doubt anyone likes buying but actually just renting. Reply
TerryLaze IAcidBurnI said: This just has to do with owning your stuff. I doubt anyone likes buying but actually just renting. This ship has sailed decades ago… From the moment that a game needs to connect to a server, even just once per new install, you stop being the owner of that game and are at the mercy of the company to keep up the support for that game, you have a "rented" (limited time) game even if you have a physical copy. Same for consoles that can get updates, that can make older games stop running on your console. We are like the slow boiling frog ,now that we exploded from being cooked we finally want to do something about it. Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/streaming/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/streaming/sales-of-cd-and-vinyl-music-sees-strong-resurgence-amid-physical-media-backlash-us-sales-of-retro-media-were-up-59-percent-and-18-percent-respectively-in-h1-2026#main
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