Is Physical Media Coming to An End?

Own nothing and be happy… that ought to become Sony’s new slogan for their PlayStation consoles. Sony announced recently that they will completely stop producing physical discs for any new PlayStation games as of January 2028. All Sony content will have to be digitally downloaded from the PlayStation store. Most of our readers probably don't own a PlayStation; however, this trend in the entertainment industry is coming for your music, movies, and books. Why should you care? Well, because buying a license to access digital content is like a long-term rental rather than a purchase. Case in point: the day after Sony made the announcement they deleted 550 movies from people’s accounts, without any refunds. The claim was that Sony lost the rights to these movies. But you bought the movie! It should be yours, right? Nope, it was just a limited license. If a company goes under or loses a copyright battle your physical media can’t be deleted or taken from you. In another example of the digital media trend, Best Buy has stopped selling physical movies in their stores. If gamers don’t revolt against Sony's latest action, movie studios might see the “success” in digital content and stop printing DVDs and Blu-Rays, forcing everyone to use a streaming service. Music has been pushed to apps like Spotify and Amazon Music. Sure, record players and vinyl are growing in popularity, but that's a niche and expensive part of the market. Books are still thankfully made readily available, but ebooks are often much cheaper than owning a physical book. But if Amazon wants, they can strip the license of your ebook rendering it unreadable. This also hurts the used market, making it harder to find media in garage sales, thrift stores, and libraries. You won’t be able to give that book or let that friend borrow that movie anymore either because of digital licensing. My recommendation? Don’t throw away your physical media. Instead, sell them to physical retail stores and make a little extra change or give them to the local library to preserve media for generations to enjoy. Technology should always offer convenience, but it shouldn’t strip away our rights as consumers.