Digital "ownership" has been a hot topic as of late, and something that everyone should take seriously. Many of the digital goods and services we purchase today are actually a license to use whatever it may be, rather than the true "ownership" you would associate with a physical medium in your possession. For example, if you purchase a film on DVD in a store, that's yours. It can't be taken from you, and there's no way to revoke access after the sale. Buy it on Amazon as a digital media, though, and if Amazon ever goes under, revokes your license to view that content, or you delete your account, you will likely no longer be able to watch it.
A good litmus test for ownership is whether or not you can access that media completely offline without any external validation. The same goes for games, music, and even some ebooks purchased online, and more and more people have realized that digital "ownership" is not true ownership in recent months. This same realization is what led me to buy a record player, and honestly? It's one of my best purchases this year.
Record player and vinyl collection
Small but growing
The record player I picked up is the Audio Technica LP60XBT, which I settled on after a lot of research. I'm familiar with the fragility of vinyl and the need for a high-quality turntable with an even higher-quality stylus. Something like the LP60XBT felt like the bare minimum to protect my records, and I'll soon need to invest in some of the basics for ensuring that my records are kept clean.
The "BT" aspect of that particular model stands for Bluetooth, and I know what at least some of you are probably thinking. What's the point of a record player with its high-quality audio capabilities if you're going to destroy it by transmitting sound over a low-bit-rate Bluetooth connection? As I'll get to, it's not all about the sound quality, and it's about convenience, too.
As for my collection, I have a rather small but growing collection of records:
- Gorillaz - The Now Now
- Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
- Gorillaz - The Fall
- Modest Mouse - Good News for People Who Love Bad News
- Porter Robinson - Worlds (10th Anniversary Edition)
One of those albums isn't like the rest, and that's The Fall by Gorillaz. That album is somewhat infamous amongst Gorillaz fans, but its existence in my collection also highlights another issue when it comes to the digital music landscape. In Ireland, that album is simply not available on Spotify, and the only legitimate ways to listen to the album at all are by either physically purchasing a copy or streaming it on another service such as YouTube. Yet at any time that access could also be revoked, so then what?
The same goes for Porter Robinson's Worlds album. The final track on the album, Hollowheart, is an exclusive only found on vinyl or, again, on YouTube. The story goes that the song was completed after the final cut-off date for the album to be submitted to the record label, resulting in the song gaining a cult following of sorts over the decade prior to its official release on vinyl. Unlike a previous vinyl exclusive from Porter Robinson that was clearly labelled as such, Hollowheart's release never really addressed the circumstances of its release. It's still not on any streaming platform, and the silence surrounding a streaming release suggests that there's still more than meets the eye.
On top of those personal benefits, physical media purchases are a great way to support your favorite artists. Spotify's pay-per-stream model may offer convenience to consumers, but the money artists can make often adds up to very little. From my research, Spotify appears to pay artists between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, meaning that an artist would need to have their track streamed between 333 and 200 times to earn a single dollar. In contrast, a single purchase could give the artist the monetary equivalent of several thousand streams at once.
Streaming is great and convenient, but it hasn't just been one album and one song where Spotify failed me entirely. I've had single tracks disappear entirely from Spotify by smaller artists, but could thankfully be found on Soundcloud or YouTube, and in one instance, I've had one disappear that I suddenly can't find anywhere. That particular track, Praise by Babbeo, made its way into my top songs of 2024 on Spotify, but has since vanished without a trace. It sucks, but again, digital ownership isn't real ownership, and all of this serves to underscore that point.
Audio quality is secondary to me
It's the easiest argument to make
A common point made by audiophiles switching to vinyl tends to focus on the quality of the audio and the massive improvement over conventional streaming services, and I get why. On its face, when it comes to vinyl, it's hard to win an argument when faced with the convenience of Spotify providing practically any song you could ever ask for. Its convenience is unmatched, and it's one of the few streaming services that, to this day, still maintains a lot of why it skyrocket in popularity a decade ago.
While I understand why those arguments are made, the truth is that audio quality isn't the end-all and be-all when it comes to music consumption for a lot of people. In fact, that argument somewhat falls apart when compared to CD as well, which struggled at first in its earliest forms but has since grown to be close to or on par with vinyl. Plus, again, even CD is often more convenient than vinyl.
So when we remove audio quality from the equation, what's left? Some of these points are likely to be obvious to those who grew up with record players, but nowadays the average twenty-something-year-old likely hasn't, and has instead grown up in a mostly digital age where convenience trumps all.
Listening to music becomes a conscious choice
You can't just idly put it on in the background
When it comes to vinyl, that lack of convenience means that music becomes a deliberate, conscious action. You can't just stick on a song in seconds, nor can you leave music playing and not realize what you've been listening to for a few hours. The nature of vinyl requires opening the sleeve, throwing the record onto your turntable, and then paying attention to flip it every twenty minutes or so.
With that level of engagement comes more thought in general. What do I want to listen to? What do I have right now? The physical act of reaching for a record and opening the sleeve means you're more likely to pay attention to the artwork, the design, and any messages from the artist. Your music hasn't just become background noise at that point; it's something to actively notice and engage with.
As a social tool, music is everywhere. It's background music at a party, it's filling in what would otherwise be awkward silence in an elevator, or it's a way to pass the time. Some people stick on music while studying or working to help them command focus or to fill in gaps in thought, and there's nothing wrong with any of that.
With that said, a physical medium, such as a vinyl, makes you engage in that process, and can ground you in the musical experience rather than simply sticking it on in the background because you always do. There's thought, there's purpose, and even the act of flipping it every twenty minutes constantly reminds you of that.
True ownership is the most important aspect of all
Digital ownership can be true ownership
The most important aspect of this endeavor, to me, has been the "true ownership" aspect of it. Like with The Fall by Gorillaz, I can now listen to that album whenever I want. I'm no longer beholden to a streaming service that can revoke my access on a whim. It's completely mine, and I could even rip that vinyl if I wanted to store a digital copy for later playback in a digital form.
To be honest, a huge part of this comes from my upbringing, where physical ownership was a cherished thing. Back at my parents' house, we have hundreds of DVDs, CDs, and records, and often the first thing that we did with a DVD or box set of a TV show was rip the content to a PC in order to play that, rather than physically using the DVD itself. Even when we didn't have a DVD player, we would still buy DVDs just to rip them, as while it started due to DVD region locking weirdness, the convenience just... stuck. We could watch movies on vacations, while traveling, or convert them for playback on other devices, and a formative tech-related memory I can recall was the conversion process to DPG format for playback on a Nintendo DS using Moonshell. We had multi-terabyte HDDs filled with movies and TV shows that were all genuinely purchased and ripped ourselves, often converted to multiple formats, and growing up that way meant that the habit stuck.
Take a step back and analyze the content you consume on a daily basis; what's yours? What can you confidently say you'll still have access to in a year, no matter what? What can you point to and say will survive without a particular web-based service or DRM platform that you don't have control over? Chances are, not a whole lot. Digital ownership has been a big part of my self-hosting journey, and this is the next step.
To be clear, this step is a pretty big one. It's likely to be more expensive overall, and I understand that expense isn't something a lot of people can justify in a world of rising costs and general economic uncertainty in many regions of the world. Thankfully, true ownership isn't just found in physical forms. You can have true digital ownership, like on platforms such as Bandcamp, which allows you to purchase your albums or songs and save a true, DRM-free copy locally. You could then put it on Navidrome and stream it to your devices just like Spotify.
You don't need to own everything you consume, but simply be aware of what you do and don't own. It can be easy to forget that all of your tracks on Spotify and all of your playlists aren't actually yours. Spotify could lock you out of your account one day, and you'd lose access to everything, and the same goes for streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, or Apple TV. Movies and TV shows can end their licensing agreements, too, which in turn means you can no longer consume that particular piece of media on your chosen service.
Digital ownership, as a concept, isn't a bad thing. It's digital "ownership", where ownership is implied but the fine print states that you merely have a license to use the product, that's problematic. Be aware of the services that you use, what you own, and what you don't own, and make changes in the areas where that makes you uncomfortable. I haven't stopped using Spotify, but I'm buying physical copies of some of my favorite albums and tracks unavailable on the platform. Support your favorite artists, buy games on sites like GOG when you can, and purchase true ownership when you can, because it's almost impossible to make the full switch in one go.