Between both personal things happening in my life and the hopefully improving weather, I’m going to be doing a lot of cleaning and moving things around this spring, and that means going through every piece of media I own — music on CD, vinyl and cassette tape; movies and TV shows on Blu-ray, DVD and VHS; and video games on discs and cartridges — and deciding if I want to keep them or not.
Most of the time the answer is yes because I’m a big proponent of collecting and keeping physical media. I fully understand the problems with holding onto all of these things — the storage space, the technological limitations and the convenience of streaming online. Case in point, I don’t need my copies of “Casablanca” on VHS and DVD if I can just go to HBO Max and watch Humphrey Bogart get drunk over Ingrid Bergman any time I want.
The thing is, all those 1’s and 0’s that make up the digital versions of all these albums and movies I love might not be there forever. They certainly aren’t always available, especially when the internet goes down. But my DVD player and turntable still work, at least for now.
