What I’m about to say will anger a lot of CE manufacturers, but this has been the laziest year in consumer electronics to date and I’m recommending that rather than spending money on the boring stuff that has come out in 2008 we all spend our money on digital media – games, music, audiobooks, ebooks, and the like. And I don’t mean digital Blu-Ray and game disks, either. I mean all bits, all season.
Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get grandpa that dialysis machine if he really needs it and if you need to buy someone an MP3 player to fulfill this recommendation, get one that ranks high on the green scale. I don’t mean digital gift cards — we don’t need any more stuff. I’m saying we don’t need any more crap. We have too much, we bought too much on credit, and we’re destroying the environment and economy with our purchases. This year, vote with your wallet and say “We don’t need a digital disk standard. We don’t need DRM. We value your content and we will pay for it, but on our terms.”
As I see it, buying digital — ideally from non-DRM sources — fulfills the promise of the digital life cycle. Music companies, as rapacious as they are, deserve our support for supporting artists we love. Book companies, as bumbling as they are, need to be shown that they can make money on ebooks. Movie studios need to be willing to release hi-res versions of their best films to an eager and hungry public.
What does this give us? It encourages the growth of digital media, which is a plus. It proves we are not a generation of pirates and thieves. It proves that the digital business model is sound.
How should you give digitally? Head over to the Amazon MP3 store and gift an album. Buy someone with an XBox a 1-year 1 DVD/streaming only subscription to Netflix (I know it’s cheating, but tell them not to get the DVD). Buy someone some cool ebooks and some software to read it on their phone.
If we all vote with our wallets this season we’ll be putting money where it matters — into the creation of future digital content. We are a digital generation. We won’t need any more “things” in the basest sense as long as the media we consume is compatible with the things we have. By buying digital, we will point to what formats we want to use. We will not be coerced by CE manufacturers into buying the latest optical disk format or console. We’ll get what we want when we want it from the celestial jukebox and keep a few tons of cardboard and plastic packing material from hitting the landfills on December 26.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.
I do believe though that digital gifts and the likes most of the time need to be complimented with physical things. I used to purchase digital artworks on http://www.Imagekind.com or customized artworks on http://www.Phokki.com . At the end of the day, softcopy feels a bit cheap. Physical canvas print still do the job. What do you think when someone sends you an email with mp3 songs, as compared to a music CD bought from the shop?
I will never buy ebooks. I had a discussion shortly after the Kindle came out with former CG writer Matt Hickey about how the kindle will do to books what the iPod (and iTunes, Amazon MP3 store, gomusic.ru and others) did to music buyers. Currently most music listeners buy digital, only hardcore music fans buy and collect records. In the next 10 years most people will be buying ebooks where only hardcore readers will still buy paper books. I will be in the hardcore reader group.
Ebooks are quite different, they don’t have the advantages that music does.
If one buys a CD for example, they can easily rip that to MP3 and play it on their iPod.
You can’t (practically) scan your books into your ebook reader.
Reading books also requires far more time and concentration than music.
Not all digital media is the same, you can’t apply a music player mentality to ebook readers.
People could always purchase all the software that they are currently pirating. That would be nice.
Or software could become reasonably priced.
$250 for Vista?
$150 for the cheapest version of office?
And these aren’t even the Ultimate versions.
You can’t possibly be serious.
$250/$150 are a bargain for software with such ubiquity. Windows runs thousands of games, .NET apps, whatever… for the price of just 4 or 5 of those games?
Windows is still the greatest software bargain on the planet. Buy it, download Visual C# Express, develop in the best dev environment, period, for free. And no I don’t work for Microsoft.
Very true
Little Red Ryan Hood,
What exactly did the iPod do to music buyers? It seems you are insinuating that something bad has happened to us. I don’t feel that way at all. I’m no longer restricted to listening to the single CD I put in my disc player when leaving the house. I no longer have to carry a disc player! There are no more jewel cases to break and lose. I know longer have to put hundreds of discs (some without a jewel case) in boxes and lug them around every time I move.
I’m all for eBooks. Stanza on the iPhone / Touch is awesome. I’m with John Biggs. Go out (or stay in really) and buy digital!
I buy MP3’s from Amazon and iTunes mostly when I hear a song and I want it now. If I know a CD is coming out with a band I like, I will go out and buy it. I like having both options and will continue to use both.
You can’t gift an album from the Amazon music store. You can only buy a gift certificate. iTunes allows you to gift an album though.
Well said.
I can understand with the current climate on going green, how this article “makes sense” to people
but
going digital is not a plus in my view. By “connecting” to the net, we disconnect from life, every day more and more. I don’t want to know how to get somewhere before I know where it is that I’m actually going. Between knowing how and knowing where, I’d always choose where. This digital age is leading us nowhere but to a dark place where we will be brain chipped, have national IDs, and we’ll be in virtual worlds. Very interesting how going green (an extremely big future taxation scam) means going digital. Also interesting is how recycling, for example, creates more harm to the environment than not recycling. Yet another interesting thing is how the earth has natural warming cycles, just as other planets have…too bad they have erased that tidbit of information from the school science books.
Meet Me In My Avatar’s Office
http://news.cnet.com/Meet-me-in-my-avatars-office/2100-1043_3-6152727.html
The Impact of Recycling by the leading world authority on recycling
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20080722jk.html
@Adam, the digital age is far from green. The energry draw from all the servers and computers running and the energy needed to keep them cool is extremely high. By producing a newer better faster gadget or computer every 6 months or year produces extreme amounts of trash.
Using the Kindle as an example (God I hate the kindle) it’s easy to see this happening after a few years of use the battery or some other component will fail and it will be thrown away whereas a book as long as it’s kept dry and away from fire will last decades and still be usable.
Digital is very convenient, but not always green.
I should have said digital media specifically, my bad.
First the nonstop “Blu-Ray is dead! Long Live DD!” posts, now an article basically telling everybody to DD everything instead of buy physical gifts?
Ok, seriously, Crunchgear couldent possibly get any more transparent at this rate. Why exactly do you keep trying so hard to declare physical media dead and keep trying to coax people to go digital? Do you have some stake in digital downloads or something?
At first, it just seemed like someone who heavily prefered Digital Downloads and held a dislike for Blu-Ray and grossly underestimated the market, but with this latest post I can’t help but wonder if you have stocks in Digital Download companies or ISPs or something, you are basically starting to use Crunchgear as an advertising front for a DD-only world.
You got us! The Downloadable Bits Council pays us 5 cents per mention of digital media! I can cut you in on the deal, if you like. All you have to do is troll about Blu-Ray on a few posts a day.
I’m serious.
The bias in this site is starting to become borderline rediculus, almost at satire levels.
The only people I have seen that advocate digital downloads this much are those that already have a stake in it, and even they arent this blatant about it.
Not to mention you always respond with the sarcastic “you got us” reply :P
You got us again on the “You got us” stuff! Akuma: who is going to pay me to advocate digital downloads? There’s no money in it until it actually hits the mainstream and, as I’ve said before, I’m completely separate from the advertising folks and I set it up that way in order to ensure that we DON’T get money for advocating certain things. Generally, however, I think digital is far superior to physical in terms of media and I think it can really change things up if we stop thinking of game/movie/music disks and instead focus on game/movie/music media.
CrunchGear People’s Front. We’re the People’s Front of CrunchGear!
its time :) go for it guys
Quite a good idea in terms of invironmental protection, but I can’t thouroughly agree to it, as our world is too much dugitalized now and if we go on like this all human beings will also be digitalized one day:)
And I recommend that, rather than spend our money this season, we save it. We’ll need it.
I didn’t mean you are literally being paid to say this, but Crunchgear’s rather enegetic view on doing away with physical media (especially Blu-Ray) makes it pretty hard not to think there isn’t something an stake.
You seem to blindly try to charge everybody into a Digital-only world without considering the consecuqnces, downsides, or even the advantages physical media has over digital.
And as most of the comments from such articles show, most do not share the idea that a digital-only world is a good idea and there are still a lot that prefer physical media over digital.
I am saying this because I have also noticed a lot of heavy bias in the articles here, take for example the recent article asking how many still have a landline or use a cellphone holster.
The site as a whole is advocating one viewpoint and being biased against all others instead of adopting a neutral stance.
I don’t think I have once seen anything said against digital downloads (that wasn’t more of a DRM argument), and definately not anywhere near the freq
I didn’t mean you are literally being paid to say the things you do for DD, but the rather foreful way Crunchgear keeps attempting to declare Blu-Ray dead and advocating DD makes me wonder that this is more than just simple preferance for DD over physical media.
You basically seem to try to strongly lead everybody into a DD-only world, without regard to the problems, disadvantes, or advantages of physical media.
And with the comments I have seen here, most don’t feel like a DD-only world is a good idea.
There are a lot of problems with going purely digital as well, and many prefer physical over digital.
Come to think of it, I have seen Crunchgear repeatedly bash physical media, but pretty much almost never seen any article talking about the disadvantages of digital downloads, unless its more about DRM than the idea of DD. At least nowhere near the frequency of yet other “Blu-Ray is dead!” post. Lots of heavy bias. Crunchgear as a whole seems to be very biased towards one side instead of taking a neutral stance.
Case in point, the recent articles asking if people still had a landline or use a cellphone holster, they were basically designed to be heavily against landlines and holster use, the holster poll was basically insulting to anyone who did use one.
Cyber Akuma : Please remember, this site is called “CrunchGear” and is a part of “TechCrunch”. Of course they are going to be pushing towards digital items as that is what the site is all about.
Surely you don’t expect them to start covering the news of your local library and video store, right?
I thought the site was all about gadgets and technology? Blu-Ray by no means old technology yet they are constantly trying to claim the format is dead.
How about taking a realistic approach instead of reporting greatly exaggerated viewpoints on what one person wishes the world was like? Nearly every Blu-Ray article here was met with comments stating why declaring the format dead is a gross overexaggeration.
Crunchgear actually states that they are a biased source of information. I thought I read that they take pride in not being another ‘cnet’ that has to sugar-coat everything to not piss anyone off.
They have opinions and you have opinions, and you’re probably not going to change each others. So move on to the next article.