How Physical Media Can Still Have a Future
It has become common wisdom that retail stores that carry physical media – CDs, books, movies in particular – are, to use the scientific term, “toast”. And indeed, whatever is being said, physical media stores are going through an upheaval: in the U.S. Borders seems barely solvent; in the U.K, Waterstones and HMV are shutting stores. It’s a pattern being repeated everywhere. Around the wealthy parts of the world, retailers who trade in old media are struggling. But they aren’t dead. Or, at the very least, they don’t have to die. There are steps that can be taken so they can save themselves. It won’t…