The Return of Owned Media

They say “what’s old is new,” and right now we’re seeing an explosion of interest in legacy media. And it’s not just nostalgia!

The great thing about vinyl records, music CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, cassettes, and VCR tapes is that you own them. You buy them once and that’s it. There’s no subscription fee, and you’ll never wake up one morning to discover that some big media corporation has lost its license to your album or movie and it’s disappeared from your library.

So here’s a short guide to legacy media for those interested in building a library:

Vinyl Records

To play vinyl records, you need a turntable. Fortunately, they’re easy to find. Keep in mind, though, that if you buy a legacy turntable with the old-school phono outputs, you need a compatible receiver with phono inputs and a ground-wire connection. If you want to play them through a computer, you’ll need a modern turntable with digital outputs.

Don’t forget, your stylus (“needle”) and cartridge are critical components of your system. The sound is only as good as that stylus, and if it’s damaged, it can permanently damage your records. Keep your vinyl LPs away from heat and direct sunlight, and store them vertically- piling them up one on top of the other can warp your discs.

Compact Discs

CDs are much more durable than vinyl, although they can degrade. One “hidden” problem to look for is scratching on the label side, which a lot of folks think doesn’t matter. But the top label is more than just information and decoration — the backing reflects the laser that’s reading the disc, and if that mirrored surface is damaged, you’ll get skips and hangups.

Music stored on a CD is much richer than music that’s streamed over the internet or stored on a device like a mobile phone. Played over a high-quality stereo system, that difference is very easy to hear. Not so much if you’re listening through earbuds.

Cassettes and Eight-Tracks

Cassettes used to be the go-to mobile music format. Despite the problem of “tape hiss,” which has never been fully solved, cassettes were easy to carry and play, and you could make your own “mix tapes” of whatever music you liked. Back in the 1980s, exchanging mix tapes was part of the courting process.

Cassettes were, of course, the solution to the eight-track, an earlier attempt at shrinking the reel-to-reel. But eight-tracks wore out pretty quickly, and when the tape had to “jump tracks,” it didn’t matter if it was in the middle of your favorite song, which ultimately doomed the format. Cassettes can be fragile, too, so check to see that the pressure pad behind the tape is still there, and give the tape a wind to make sure there are no creases on it.

VHS and Betamax

Videotape was the film equivalent of the cassette, and it has some of the same problems. Tape degrades over time, and there’s nothing much you can do to stop it. It can also snap or get caught up in the playback machinery.

There were two competing formats at first, VHS and the more compact Betamax, which ultimately lost out and faded away. Scaring up Betamax tapes and players can be difficult these days, but VHS is easy to find. Just be aware that a tape that plays well today might be junk tomorrow. Some folks look specifically for titles released on videotape that never made it to disc or streaming, which they convert to digital at home. Which is another reason people like owned media: As long as you’re not reselling homemade copies, you can do whatever you want with it!

DVD and Blu-ray

While there were a few other formats out there, like Pioneer’s LaserDisc, the DVD, and later Blu-ray formats came to dominate the video disc market. You can still find lots of movies, concerts, documentaries, and other material on these formats, as well as the players. And like compact discs, they’re durable and portable, so what’s not to love?

Another wonderful thing about all these formats is that they’re tangible. There’s something about browsing through the collection, pulling a title out and holding it, looking at the cover, that’s very human and comforting. Sometimes, just walking past the shelf is enough to bring back memories of where we were and who we were with the first time we heard an album or watched a movie. And for some folks, that’s the ultimate feature, the intangible value of tangible media.