The importance of physical media in the online age

This post has been inspired by two separate things. First, the experience of seeking out novelty songs for my late September Twitter challenge #Welltheresanovelty. Second, an article in The Guardian by Zach Schonfeld about films and TV shows which appeared today (October 1, 2024). It made me reflect on the role of physical media in my life and how curating that social and personal history is now more important than ever.

Disappearing musical history

I started collecting records in January 1974 when I bought Billy Howard’s single King of the Cops. Now, I would be the first to admit that it doesn’t stand the test of time, but the B side, Bond is a four letter word, definitely does. However, if I didn’t have the 7 inch single in my possession, that piece of personal history would be irretrievable on Spotify, the dominant force in streaming and the trend setter for the modern music experience. Do I think King of the Cops would have a renaissance if it was available on Spotify? Of course not, because apart from it not being particularly funny when listened to objectively, how many people now remember Ironside, McCloud or Cannon? The novelty single market is not particularly well served on Spotify with obvious gaps, for example, the whole of Not The Nine O’ Clock News, The Original Muppet Show Cast albums, all the Spitting Image songs, either Captain Beaky single by Keith Michell or The Oldest Swinger in Town by Fred Wedlock.

During December 2022, I took part in Blogmas and included an entry about Isla St Clair’s Christmas album entitled Isla I wrote to Isla to let her know about my entry and it turned out that she didn’t have the rights to it and it was nowhere to be seen on Spotify. Happily Isla has now rectified the situation and all 12 songs from an absolutely gorgeous Christmas album can be found here. It is still not on Spotify, so it will continue to be a pleasure only for those who know about it, which now includes you! I am very pleased to think that my small blog played a part in reuniting both Isla and the internet with such a lovely album, but if I hadn’t had a physical copy in the first place it may have remained lost in time, at least as far as the internet is concerned.

I am aware that my examples may not seem important to some, but musically we are in danger of losing some nuggets of gold amongst the tons of detritus. Remember that every record you dislike was bought by perhaps many people at the time and deserves to be preserved to reflect the huge variety of music available throughout past eras.

What happened to that film?

As Zach Schonfeld observes in his excellent article, Hollywood is deliberately reducing the amount of film and TV available to us on both streaming services and the internet. This is done for a variety of reasons, that may be financial or cultural in nature, but whatever the underlying reason they impoverish us as consumers of popular culture. I have studied popular culture in my spare time, and it is not unusual to see this situation occur. For example, folk songs in the days before musical notation became available to the masses, and before even the most rudimentary recording devices were available, were lost in time because they were considered unimportant by those with influence. Classical music was seen as superior to folk music, especially as folk music told the stories of ordinary lives which those in power have always been disinterested in, so the latter was allowed to fade. That fading of our cultural history would have been even more complete had it not been for far sighted individuals such as Cecil Sharp, Lucy Broadwood and Ralph Vaughan Williams who collected songs from across the UK either written down or recorded on wax cylinders. If you want the full story this Historia Magazine article is fascinating. Schonfeld recounts the inadvertent cultural vandalism that means we have lost 90% of the silent films made before the advent of talkies, because they were considered disposable and were not valuable in a financial or cultural sense. In the case of Charlie Chaplin he destroyed all the negatives of one of his films as a tax write off! In the early days of the internet, you could find a number of websites that would do DVD copies of films that were out of print or were withheld for various reasons. Sadly, these websites have been closed down by the companies that hold the original rights, even though they have no intention of releasing the material themselves. For me, the saddest situation concerns Richard Williams magnificent 1971 version of A Christmas Carol. I had the foresight to get one of these unofficial DVDs which I love revisiting, but for everyone else it has been locked away in a vault somewhere for decades, probably being damaged by neglect, because of rights issues. There are a number of rumours as to who has it in their possession, but let’s just say that I will not accuse anyone on here because I cannot afford the libel case! Whatever the facts, it has been unseen on television and on DVD and is fading from our cultural memories. It contains amazing voice performances, chiefly by Alastair Sim reprising his role as Scrooge 20 years after his portrayal became the benchmark by which all other Scrooges are judged. How can we let a treasure like that languish in a vault or even a mouse trap if the rumours are true! Many of my favourite shows from the past never even had a VHS release. For example, the excellent ITV version of Vice Versa starring Peter Bowles and Iain Cuthbertson has never appeared in any format.

The wholesale destruction of BBC and ITV programmes from the 50s, 60s and 70s is well known, and, if it hadn’t have been for the fans who obsessively recorded every episode, whole stories of Doctor Who would have been lost for ever. They were not to know that the wiping of their beloved programme was going to take place, it was just a piece of huge luck for the BBC who were increasingly embarrassed by their short sighted approach to their archive. What about now? Who is recording and more importantly keeping episodes of The Powerpuff Girls or Dexter’s Laboratory, two marvellous cartoons that have recently gone behind a paywall? No one, because we assumed that we would always be able to access them freely. I have a library of DVDs covering a whole range of films and TV, many of which are still available, but some of which are not. I have seen content on YouTube deleted, shows disappear from view on streaming services such as Netflix or get cut to pieces when they are shown, for various reasons. We never know which one of our favourite series or films is the next candidate for online oblivion.

For all of you who, like me, have a huge library of vinyl, DVD and Blu-ray, don’t be tempted to downsize. Keep hold of it, even when you move, because that is something that can never be taken away from you at the whim of a TV, film or music executive who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.