some observations on my media-consumption habits and why old-media doesn't fit into my lifestlye

My rage at discovering that our new Comcast internet has a 250gig monthly cap got me thinking about my own media consumption habits and how stereotypically-'modern' they are. None of this is new or original, it's simply my own musings on how far we've come and why old-media is dying.

I consume a lot of media - I need music to concentrate, and when working on largely-manual tasks that require little thought I listen to or watch podcasts or audio books (tech-news and comedy primarily). And my media is almost-entirely internet-delivered. Music and podcasts are obviously all online-delivered (I hate CDs - too much junk to lug around every time I move - I'm in my 4th residence in 7 months and will be moving again in 3 months). Video is almost-entirely online (streaming and torrents - largely anime and obscure shows that aren't available domestically anyways) and I don't own a tv (my computer has a much nicer monitor and it's all on-demand - I hate watching broadcast tv, too many commercials, too expensive, and it's never at a convenient time). Gaming is largely online-multiplayer. Most of my reading and all of my news is online (newsblogs, design, planning, and architecture blogs, and the like - much better content from far better writers and more legitimate reporting than anything in dead-tree formats anymore) - I ditched all of my train magazine subscriptions even because I never bothered to read them - the paper format is just too inconvenient and not shareable, sortable, or easily-archived (plus the writing and editing of the major magazines has really gone downhill in the last 5 or 10 years).

I love the new possibilities for media creation and distribution that the internet has enabled - I am consuming far more content of far higher quality than ever before, and I can share it with my friends. CD and DVD sales aren't falling because of piracy - they're falling because they're being out-competed - we have access to more interesting, convenient and higher-quality content than possible before and nothing 'they' do to fight it will change this.