this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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I mean, you can do that.
But it's inconvenient and expensive and takes up space. So most folks choose not to do that for pragmatic reasons. Physical media still is broad available for books and music. Less so for films and TV shows, but many are still available in physical formats at online retailers.
I have a lot of physical books, like 500+. People tend to be quite negative about it and have so for a long time, because the popular conception is that physical media is stupid and wasteful. A lot of people take pride in owning nothing physical and regard that as 'minimalism' and are more than happy to purchase digital rentals or subscriptions only to further this aesthetic.
But it makes no sense to continue to produce physical media if only a niche audience is buying it, unless the product is niche, cheap to produce and has a high mark up. That's why Vinly works, folks are willing to pay $30 per record and records cost pennies to physical reproduce.
I didn't read the article, so I'm not sure how hung up they are on physical media, but the title is about owning vs renting/subscriptions. There are still places were digital copies can be purchased and downloaded to own, DRM-free. Personally, I prefer to store bits on HDDs and SSDs rather than CDs. Of course, that option is limited. Digital music can still be owned (eg bandcamp,Q-something,etc), same for audiobooks (shout out libro.fm), ebooks less so, but still possible and workarounds exist (deDRM).
Movies and TV are where it really runs dry. There's a few indie creators you can buy from directly, but for everything else, if you don't want to have a bunch of dvd/blu-ray cases taking up space your only non-rent/subscription options are borrowing from the library (my jam, but a limited collection), or pirating.