Happy New Year everyone!
Many blessings to everyone that reads this post and I’m rooting for your inevitable and undeniable success!
This past year, I’ve been thankful for many things, but I often find myself appreciating things that people would consider outdated or of the past.
A lot of things were simpler over the past years, and I find myself returning to those things in the years to come with a pure focus on ownership.
Personal Development – Happy New Year: Valuing Music Ownership through CDs and Mp3s
Although I am a music artist and creator, I’ve found myself becoming fed up with a lot of things. I remember a time when many artists would put out mixtapes for free downloads which helped me a lot when I was a minor and didn’t have my own money.
I was going through my archives and found so many albums I haven’t heard in years, and it was great because even though I hadn’t listened to some of these projects since the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, I was able to listen to them on-demand as I felt.
This made me realize that I was relying too much on streaming. I think streaming is great for sampling music to determine if I actually want to buy it, but by having my entire library on a service gives away my ownership.
A perfect example of this is when Spotify or Deezer removes songs or full albums that I enjoyed. Some of these projects are pulled from every service and literally gone forever. In essence, although it was cheaper to stream, it cost me in the long run by not buying the mp3 or backing up my collection.
Additionally, I ran into the same issue on the PlayStation Network. Once I stopped paying for PS+, I lost all access to all the monthly games that they gave me for paying my yearly subscription. Since there’s only certain games I like, it would have been better to just purchase the games outright.
So at least for me, going forward, I have a very curated collection of physical CDs and physical games as I don’t want to take up too much space. But I will definitely focus more on purchasing and backing-up my music via Mp3’s.
With all the Black Friday sales, I actually went and re-acquired an mp3 player with some really good headphones. After acquiring these things, my music listening experience has improved drastically as the quality of audio is sooo much better and I love it!
Personal Development – Happy New Year: Valuing Video Media Ownership through DVDs, Blu-Ray, Mp4s, and select streaming services
In addition to valuing music, I’ve been valuing my TV shows and Movies a lot more as well. Here, I ran into the same issues from Video streaming services as the Music Streaming services.
Many times my favorite shows were removed or just not even offered on the service. So nowadays, I’ll use a streaming service to determine if I like a series and if I like it, I’ll go buy the DVD or Blu-ray afterwards.
For some series, I can get the mp4 files. Although I haven’t checked it in a while, I also have a life-time subscription to PLEX so I can curate all my media. By the way, the lifetime subscription means that I paid one time and I keep it forever. Of course, this is as long as the company stays in business, so its still good to back-up all of your media to your hardrives or computer.
I’d say the biggest slap in the face for me with streaming is that you are only paying for the license to see the content and not to own it so its just better to buy it outright. Instead of spending that $12 – $100 per month on a service, it’s better to use that money to buy 1-3 series each month with that allowance in either Mp4, DVD, or Blu-ray format so that way its yours.
Personal Development – Happy New Year: Valuing Hardcopy Books and Pdfs
Lastly, I’ve been on a run of getting a set amount of Hardcopy books and manga. Of course, here I don’t want to take up too much space too, so the option of buying the e-book and downloading a pdf file of the book works too.
I’ve acquired amazing amounts of manga on my travels around the word and especially in Japan. Getting those books directly from the source is an experience in itself and it makes having the physical books mean even more than just buying it on Amazon or something.
But my main point is, at least in America, we’ve began to devalue the media that we consume as well as the work that goes into it in order to create it. By doing so, we’ve fallen into the trap of relying too much on convenience and ease of simple access.
At least for me, by maneuvering my ways of consumption back to the formats of when things were a little more simple, I can pay 1 one time and own what I actually pay for and like.
If you read to the end and enjoyed this post, then please share this post and check out my latest “Freestyle” mixtape when you get a chance.
This is the 3rd installment of my Beast Mode Freestyle series in which I put on a hot beat, walk up to the microphone and say whatever comes to my mind. This means that nothing was written or pre-determined as its a way to test my own creativity and literary abilities.
Much love and blessings again in the New Year!