Hi,

Do you still buy physical media? I do (except games), and here is why :
Services like Spotify, Steam, Amazon and the likes don't allow you to own stuff you paid for (Ownership vs license to use blah blah, whatever. My home, my rules). When I buy something (ebook, game, music), I expect to be able to do what I want/when I want with it (within reason, of course). Steam offline? Can't play my Games (offline mode didn't work in 2 cases). Amazon will pull books from Kindles whenever the publisher feels like it (yes, in this case they gave money back).

Why the games exception : On the last physical disc I bought was only a steam installer... Pissed me off.
I now buy all my games from gog.com, which allows me to download and archive installers myself. No Internet? No worries.
For music, I found a similar concept from bandcamp. But there aren't many artists I like, so physical disks & ripping it is.
I know of nothing for movies and TV shows. Also Bluray quality is still better than streaming services offer. And will NOT change during playback.

The most important to me is : I want to play back music on my devices/system as I like it. Don't like the UI of player A, just use player B. This is impossible if the player is tied to the service.

So here is why I buy physical media, anyone care to share his view on this?

Copyright rules always apply, one way or the other, no matter in what form you buy stuff. The owners of the material do have the right to stipulate how you may use the permanent license you have purchased.

Nonetheless, I always buy music on physical media: vinyl albums or CDs. I do the same with movies and such.

Disk drives do fail, and sometimes a media vendor doesn't remember that you bought something. But CDs, properly cared-for, will last forever. (I still have, and still play, the very first CD that I ever bought – at a time when they were still a novelty.)

Sometimes I transfer the recording to my iPhone for convenience in listening to it.

Software can no longer be purchased on physical media, and I don't distribute my own product that way anymore. But I specifically encourage you to carefully keep a copy of the license code, printed and filed someplace. (The installation e-mail gives you a URL where you can re-download a copy of the latest available installer.)

Nope, that's what USB sticks (and alike) are for, welcome to the digital age!

I do still buy physical media. Sadly I haven't used my bluray burner in forever though. I just have a reverence for optical media - and hope to actually see TB capacity discs, but thats just me. When it does come to movies, I prefer physical media though, or if I can buy a non-drmed movie to slap on a usb stick that is fine, but I'm not really a fan of streaming. Also 4k netflix just cannot compare to a 4k bluray disc anyways, because of obviously bandwidth, whereas netflix heavily compresses their 4k stream.

For classical music, a CD is still the best format. For books, kindle may do for fiction, but it often makes a mess of footnotes and diagrams, and you can't have several items open on the table at the same time. Games, I don't buy.

I use the Kindle app on my iPad for those types of books.

I still buy CDs, for the quality of the music, and having a physical copy. I do occasionally use services like Spotify to listen to music, but mostly to listen to something new, before I decide to buy a physical copy of it. The audio quality of streaming music isn't great, and listening to it over bluetooth is even worse. My only complaint with CDs is I've finally given in to using Amazon to purchase them, as most of music stores have a very limited selection these days. I have purchased 1 or 2 albums in digital format only through Amazon. The downloads are DRM free, but they are only vbr/js mp3s.

As far as gaming goes, I do my gaming on consoles. I still prefer to have a physical copy of the game. But since most games require the Internet for patches, add-ons, or other features, I'm not sure how useful it will be to have a phsyical copy when the services they require become inaccessible.

I still buy CDs for music (I actually bought 2 CDs at the end of 2016). Main reason is that I cannot really find what I was looking for as a lossless purchase, Amazon is all mp3, and so is Google Play - I tried HD Tracks, but still did not have what I was looking for so I just said fsck it and ordered the actual CDs. Buying digital music is pointless to me, since majority is just lossy mp3s. It is just easier for me to just get the CD itself and rip to flac.

In the Enterprise world, even USB sticks have disappeared, which incidentally closes one door exploited by hackers, in favor of The Cloud. For mundane items, individual Ownership doesn't matter since it can always be "borrowed: again. The things worth keeping exactly as they are and under one's own control still require physical media. I still own a few floppies I consider indispensable and many CDs/DVDs/ and various external drives. That, for me, will likely never disappear entirely.

So I have just been bitten by online content...
My email provider had DNS issues, I wanted to download an ebook I had already purchased, but for some reason the service decided it wanted to verify me through email. No ebooks for me today.

Thanks for your responses, I thought as much about the quality of Audio CDs and blurays.

I'm doing my best to avoid games that require an always-on connection. you'd be surprised how much good stuff is out there even if you avoid Ubisoft/EA and the likes.

I only ever buy physical media.
I never buy software media and never will.
I never watch movies etc from the internet and never will.

Not as much when I was in my early teens up until my early thirty's. Why? No need to. I buy subscriptions for monthly access for music and TV, movies and shows. I buy kindle ebooks as well.

The only caveat is if internet goes down. I'm screwed! :-]