Collectible

This is a clarion call to the music and movie industries. You have to figure a way to get more collectible but quick or your days of physical formats are numbered. I am not sure that this matters to you all all the much, maybe moving to digital is just fine with you, and I certainly don't want to promote your desire for redundant formats and increased capital. But collectors like me will always want to collect. Me, I collect books.

So here's what I'm thinking. Hardcore collectors aren't all going to abandon their coveted movie collections. But almost all tech savvy and casual collecting people are. There is simply no reason to take up hordes of space with your music and movies. And so I am predicting the death of physical formats in those industries. And I for one would at least like there to be another option.

The problem simply stated is plastic. And inserts. These things just scream disposable. Look at the mass CD booklet craze of the 90's. Everyone took out the slip insert and the CD and trashed its plastic casing. And then you have a collection of CDs with a ridiculous home. That of course is the impulse to condense which quite frankly is much more efficiently done by digital formats.

Both industries need to standardize some sort of integral construction of their products. Bind inserts to the front flap. Set the whole thing in a nice binding. Make it look collectible. Of course many already are this way, but they are fewer and further between and in fact complicate collection by destroying uniformity. But plastic doesn't work even if it is uniform. It is simply not nice enough and worthy of display enough to survive the impending onslaught of serious digital offerings.

As a book collector I know I am biased. In fact DVDs are reasonably collectible as is. I think, in part, because the cover in not--or only with difficulty--removable. But I need more. And I think they need more to survive as well. It is always going to be tempting to the tinizers to limit the things they need to store. But the collectors want to display and I'd like them to be able to. And to display something nice.

This might also cause me to write an offshoot post about how the book industry has absolutely no worries about being taken over by digital media at this point cause ain't no one reading online books and so they needs to back up off the copyright locks on Google Book Search. Is all.