Will physical media become a niche?

maybe once you can own rather than only licence digital media. As much as I love free podcasts and getting mp3 versions of some the CDs I purchase through amazon, I still prefer a physical copy if I am not getting it free.

Guess what? I could not care less. Not at all. All this means to me is that I can buy used CDs and LPs for a dollar.

I can not stand the sound of streaming sound or Mp3s. Quite frankly I'm not crazy about the sound of CDs either but they are far better than any of the media which does not have physical form.

You need to understand that all this non-physical media is chock full of compromises. Only loss-less media is free from these compromises. And where do you find that anyway? It's pretty rare. I don't see any of it on YouTube. These compromises drastically reduce sound quality. It lowers it from high fidelity to low fidelity. Many people can not hear this. Many people have tin ears. But then again there are a good number of people who have "golden ears" and they are the people buying vinyl LPs and expensive turntables. The people who buy cheap record players just do it because it is fun to see shiny black discs spinning round and round. Those things are no better then an iPod when it comes to sound quality.

So far technology has not figured out how to store enough information on an iPod or similar device or stream it in real time on something like YouTube and make it high fidelity. But in time it will. But like I say, I really don't care. I'm late middle aged and I'll be pushing up daisies when that happens. It's a shame because I'd like to be able to stream high fidelity off YouTube. I was listening to Esquivel! last night on it and it only made me want to go out and hunt for some Esquivel! LPs.

Technology is slowing down in terms of audio. Seriously, a loudspeaker is basically the same as it was in 1925. The only changes have been refinements. The other "advances" in players are (as I has been saying all along) size. There have been no (none at all) improvement in fidelity since the invention of the CD player in the mid 1980s. There have been slight improvements in AD converters but that is relatively minor. Those who insist that CDs sound artificial and harsh can state that no improvements have been made to player quality since the early 1960s with the introduction of stereophonic phonograph records.

Well, whatever. I shall never give up my vinyl records, CDs or tapes even if I live to be 120 years old.

Although it will be less popular. Physical media for movies will take quite a while to die out. Many people don't have bandwidth that can handle streaming movies and downloads can take a very long time. Even those that do have the bandwidth are limited by data caps or high data fees. This likely won't change appreciably anytime soon.

With 4K on the horizon. Many of the people with larger data limits in the 250GB to 300GB range will quickly use them on 4K streaming. So this can be another lifeline for physical media.

Then there are purest. Whom will buy media the longest. At least until streaming meets or exceeds the bitrate employed by physical media. As a Bluray provides audio and video clarity far beyond streamed sources. I think Bluray video is around 40mbps and lossless audio such as DTS or TrueHD not included in the 40. While Netflix HD is around 5mbps including heavily compressed audio. Based on what I can find.

Physical media maybe, but it appears you will still be able to buy copies of your favorite movies to keep if you want to. iTunes lets you buy copies that you keep on your system and I presume can back up if you want to. The only thing that bothers me is all the add-ons that come with a DVD are fading away. You never see a commentary track on a movie download or netflix. I'm in the business and I really enjoy listening to the commentary tracks after I have seen the movie.

Specifically to answer your question, Yes. The big duplication houses that were making DVDs by the hundreds of thousands every day are nearly out of business.