I noticed that as the years go by and technology is becoming more and more streamlined and convenient for everyone to access, heavy downloading is slowly starting to become a thing of the past. Many people probably don’t notice this yet because all they see in stream services that’s readily available nowadays is all good things.
My opinion about this is that I’m still hesitant with entrusting my content on a cloud (regardless of how companies ensure us customers that our data will be 100% safe and secured) or putting my backup online. I would rather very much download, hoard on media, keep it in external storage devices offline than have it online. I’m sure it won’t be forever that I can manage to be online, too. So there’s that.
There’s also the pressing concern w/ external devices that they break and/or become corrupted as the years go by. In my experience it all depends how well you take care of your things. It’s been more than 5 years and they’re still functional and not even once that any of them got infected by a virus, neither have I dropped them. *knock on wood*
If streaming works very well for you and makes your life a whole lot easier, then good for you. I guess I’m just too paranoid about content seeping elsewhere once it’s online and that saying that goes along the lines of “anything you upload online is there forever.” Or I probably watch too much sci-fi TV series, hahaha.
Music and video streaming in this day and age
As soon as Spotify became available here locally, most if not everyone got rid of their local iTunes Library content and switched immediately to streaming their music. I almost did the same thing until I came to a couple of instances where I couldn’t find any songs or albums available for streaming for some particular local artists and even for international musicians.
The way Spotify works, from what I observed is that they’ll definitely have the discography of almost all mainstream artists. The only exceptions would be the few who especially had their music be restricted to being offered to be streamed online for free (I know who you are thinking, haha!). About that.. I don’t really care as I’m not a fan of her. 😛 And there are other ways of getting music for free.
Anyway, after free music streaming comes free TV/movie media streaming. Services like Netflix and hulu are popular for this purpose. Unfortunately that one is not available here yet.. though people have found alternatives or workarounds to making it work in countries where Netflix is restricted.
In the Philippines, recently the online media streaming website iflix has been launched and the people who use it are growing day by day. Personally I haven’t tried it and I’m more hesitant about it. I would most probably only give their service a shot (and this is an if and only if situation) if they have local media content dating back to the early 1950s. Philippine shows and movies. Basically, shows that cannot be found anywhere else online.
At its current state, I assume it has about the same content as Netflix and most of it are probably faster to watch if I just get it elsewhere where HD is an option. Given the slow internet in this country, livestreaming IMO is not an option and I would rather wait for a video finish downloading than stream it live and have it lag and waste time.
Few years back, lagi rin ako nagdodownload ng TV shows especially nun times na may HIMYM, Chuck, Heroes etc. I stopped nung na-assign ako to work sa AU kasi naparanoid ako na baka ma-track yun illegal activity ko at bigla na lang may kumatok sa apartment at madeport ako sa Pinas. Ngayon I just copy from friends na nagdodownload ng TV shows at movies 😊
As for music, Spotify na rin gamit ko especially now na maliit lang capacity ng phone ko. I subscribed to Spotify Premium directly with Spotify (annoying kasi yun sa Globe na auto-subscribe unless i-stop tapos kahit ilang ulit ka na magreply ng SPOTIFY STOP hindi pa rin naman nagsstop. Kelangan mo pa rin itawag. Sorry biglang nag-rant :P)
Ah, streaming would be so much better only if we have a faster internet connection! Just like most of those who commented, I’ve stopped downloading songs when I started using spotify. I still download albums though from time to time. 😀
For movies, still a torrent girl. Hehe! 😀
I think a big hurdle before such services really redefine the Philippine media landscape is the reliability, speed and availability of high-speed Internet. Also, to an extent, the gatekeepers (ie the telcos) should also stop pursuing a walled garden strategy (ie the perception that Spotify is only for Globe users, or in iFlix’s case, only for Smart users) and promote wider availability of services. Until then, we’ll all stick with torrents rather than fork out for the semi-instant tendencies of Netflix.
I still have an iTunes library. I don’t use Spotify, and occasionally use Deezer for album reviews. I have an external hard drive. And I still listen to the radio… albeit foreign ones.
For TV shows or movies, I mostly download them. But for music, I’ve used Spotify ever since it became available in the Philippines — I find it easier this way. I’ve become lazy with downloading a whole bunch of songs. :)))
I’m beginning to use Spotify a lot these days but whenever I’m infront of a computer, I find myself clicking the iTunes icon agad agad.
What I’m trying not to do now is giving into the Premium subscription temptation. Konting effort lang (by digging through my music library) I can save that P130-something hahaha.
For the folks like me who does not have online capabilities 100% of the time (no smartphone), prefer downloading music and other stuff. The techy people usually has the knowledge and expertise in preserving such data that they don’t even rely in the cloud business. Nice article Anna!
Why thanks! Haha thanks for passing by too. 😀 Go downloaders!
I don’t like cloud storage or the business that much because of the things I hear in the news today like the content leaking and stuff.
Exactly! If you have your own business and you have a lot of intellectual properties to protect, why risk it investing in cloud services?
I still download mostly. I’m a hoarder by nature and I hate having to pause every now and then when streaming. It drives me crazy. haha
High five! Haha I have the same sentiments, too! I can’t be patient enough to wait during streaming.. mawawalan lang ako ng gana to watch the whole thing eventually.
I have to admit, I have heavily relied on streaming nowadays. I hardly download anything anymore!
You were actually one of the people I had in mind while writing this post, because of the time (I think) when you reformatted your laptop but forgot to backup your iTunes library. 😛