The Problem with Streaming — and the Case for Physical Media | Tom Rizzuto | TED

What you're looking at right now is called "bone music." Bone music is a relic of a very interesting time in world history. A time when the governments of the Soviet Union restricted access to American music like jazz and rock ‘n’ roll so tightly that in many cases, they wouldn't even let their citizens own or listen to this music. Now the young people of the Soviet Union wanted to hear this music so badly that they figured out they could actually bootleg American records by cutting sound grooves into discarded X-ray plates, in many cases preserving the original image of the X-ray. Now these records, if you want to call them that, looked awesome. They didn't sound so good. I don't think you're particularly surprised to hear that, but they look cool. And that's important. And even more importantly, it allowed these young Soviets to hear this music and to own it and to distribute it to the people around them. Now if you’ve heard about bone music before today, you probably heard of it as like a historical curiosity, or maybe even a symbol of defiance against the censorship of the Soviet Union.

And the truth is, bone music is both of those things. But in the age that we're living in right now, I think that the story of bone music gives us some things to think about in the way that we consume media in our own lives. I'm talking specifically about streaming media. The streaming revolution brought so many wonderful things into our lives. Suddenly, you didn't hear people talking about hard-to-find music because nothing was hard to find. Music from all over the world, any genre you wanted to listen to, was available instantly, right on your phone. That's a cool thing. And look, I love streaming media. I'm streaming movies, I'm streaming podcasts, I'm streaming TV, I'm making a piece of streaming media right now. But I do think that all this streaming creates some issues that we want to think about. First, I'm going to be honest with you, I'm a little nostalgic for the way things used to be. You know, I think we're missing something when we don't have the physical media. You know, we’re missing the adventures that we used to go on to find it.

We’re missing getting it. We’re missing keeping it in our collections and showing it to our friends. That's big stuff. And I'm not the first person to say this, but artists and creators need to be fairly compensated for the art they create -- as well as the streaming companies and the media conglomerates making money, too. Everybody needs to be financially sustainable for this all to work. And it's also important to note that in this age where it seems like the algorithm is just feeding us the same stuff over and over again, we need to figure out how to amplify the voices of traditionally marginalized groups. All of this is very important. It's also not what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here today to talk about the power of physical media, and why it might be important for us to keep around as we move into our constantly evolving media landscape. Physical media keeps the promise of permanence in a way that streaming simply cannot.

So what do I mean by this? Well, let’s take our example of our Soviet kids, right? This American music meant so much to them that they took tremendous risks to get it and to get it out there to their friends. This music inspired them. So much so that when the Berlin Wall finally fell down, people started saying that it was the American music, as well as many other very important things, that caused these kids to look at the world and to imagine the changes that they wanted to see in their own societies. So imagine something: if all media was streaming back then, how easy would it have been for their governments or whoever to just shut off access to it? And in the world that we live in today, where so few actual people have so much control over these big media conglomerates and have the power to take things off of streaming instantly, I think we have to ask ourselves: why would they do that?

Is it a control thing? Are they hiding something from us? Is it censorship? Are there messages they don't want us hearing? And the truth of the matter is, it could be any of those things, but physical media -- actual CDs, actual DVDs, if you’re as old as me, cassettes, VHS, whatever -- all of these things keep the media in our hands. They make it harder for us to lose. And if we need another example from history about the importance of physical media, let's move away from the world of music, and let's move into another world where streaming has also become very popular. Let's talk about movies. This is "Nosferatu." "Nosferatu" is a classic of the silent horror genre. Film historians will tell you that "Nosferatu" changed the way that scary movies were even thought about. But here’s what a lot of people don’t know: we actually came very close to losing “Nosferatu” forever. And that’s because, as film historians will tell you, “Nosferatu” pretty conclusively ripped off Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” And the Stoker family, for obvious reasons, were not pleased about this.

In fact, they were so displeased that they took the "Nosferatu" production to court and they won. And as part of that court decision, it was decided that every single copy of "Nosferatu" had to be destroyed. And obviously, they missed a few. And because they missed a few, "Nosferatu" lives on to this day. And look, it's very possible that "Nosferatu" is not as important to the history of world events as rock ‘n’ roll was to the Soviet kids. Or maybe it is, I don't know. Who am I to say? There may be messages and meanings in "Nosferatu" that we have yet to interpret. But the point is, we still have it to interpret. And the reason we still have it around is because it is just more difficult to get rid of every single piece of a physical piece of media, especially if it is mass-produced. So again, what does this mean to us today? Well, look. We have to remember something: media is a very powerful thing.

Books, movies, TV, podcasts, music, all of this stuff. This is the stuff that inspires us. This is the stuff that helps us look at the world for the way that it should be, rather than the way that it is. And in our constantly evolving media landscape, I think that it's worth it for us to try to keep some of this physical media around, to continue to look at and to continue to inspire us. And look, the truth of the matter is, we're not going to get rid of streaming media. We should not get rid of streaming media. Streaming media is an awesome thing. But I also think that we can't live in a world where so few people have the power to unilaterally get rid of so many pieces of potentially important art. So how are we going to do this? I don't know, I don't know. I honestly don't know. It may be a concerted effort between the media companies and the creators themselves.

It may be an underground thing, like the bone music was in the Soviet Union. But I do think that we have to think about it. I think that physical media should remain a part of our media world. And I believe that as we move into this new phase of world history, preserving physical media should be a priority as we move into the future. Thank you. (Applause)