Streaming platforms face backlash as analog nostalgia fuels 'slow media' market
In a '90s-style mall in Hanmer, Ont., "Strickly Nostalgia" offers analog movies, music, and games to people yearning for the era before digital streaming. Researchers say the market for retro is driven by the tactile feel of discs and tapes, the rise of nostalgia in popular media, and being able to keep something in one's own collection that a streaming service can't take away.
Analog media in demand at Hanmer, Ont., store serving fans of the pre-digital era
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A custom 3-D printed sign in the style of old BlockBuster Video stores entices analog-seeking patrons to Mike Strickland's shop in a mall in Hamner, Ont. Strickly Nostalgia sells collectibles, retro games and consoles, and physical media like CDs, cassette and VHS tapes, and vinyl records.
The business serves a growing market driven by nostalgia and the desire to own physical objects, Strickland said.
“For younger adults right now, it's being able to hold on to something tangible — whether they play it or not — like a record. Some people will ... just hang it on their wall," he told CBC News.
Knowing that it can't be taken away — in contrast to renting digital media — was important, said Strickland, as it represented "owning something."
Though the Hamner area is about 25 kilometres northeast of downtown Sudbury, Strickland initially found his customers online, selling on eBay. But with the high fees platforms like eBay charge, a friend suggested that opening a physical storefront could better serve the market for nostalgia.
The growing market for these kinds of physical media reflects a desire for stability and ownership of one's own collection, safe from algorithmic changes and de-platforming from a streaming service, according to Louis-Paul Willis, a film studies professor and researcher at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
Willis researches nostalgia in popular culture, and in 2022 wrote Analog Desires On Stranger Things and the Logics of Nostalgia, exploring desire through the lens of Matt Duffer's cult series Stranger Things.
Gen Z in particular "has this appetite for analog technologies,” Willis said, their yearning for objects from a more secure era the result of growing up in "a period of political and financial instability."
Unstable media
An incipient backlash against massive media conglomerates may also be fuelling the market for physical media. Strickland said he’s seen a spike in video game sales since Sony announced it would stop releasing PlayStation 5 games on disc.
The decision has caused the prices of physical media from PlayStation and even Nintendo to spike dramatically, Strickland said, citing a 10-fold increase for some games.
But Sony insisted the move was a "natural direction", enabling it to "align more closely" with how its customers prefer to access and play games, the company's communications director Sid Shuman wrote at the time.
Many gamers disagreed, flooding the company's social media channels with negative reactions, calling it a terrible decision and some vowing to boycott PlayStation games and consoles.
Strickland too cited patrons complaining to him about the decision, and believes PlayStation made a mistake by shifting away from physical media.
The shift to digital streaming services appeared to be be an attempt to pre-empt the kind of peer-to-peer sharing that caught the music industry off guard when fans began pirating albums on sites like Napster in the early 2000s, according to Professor Willis.
Back then music and entertainment industry "dinosaurs" were slow to shift with market changes as peer-to-peer sharing threatened to wipe out their business model, Willis said.
Entertainment industry 'finally got the upper hand'
Now the entertainment industry has "finally got the upper hand," he said, with consumers "held hostage" to subscription services.
"If you want to consume music, movies, [or] TV shows, you have to subscribe,” he said.
The shift to digital media has also discouraged sharing, Willis said.
“If I buy a film and I want to lend it to a friend … I'm entitled to do that as a purchaser of this DVD or VHS tape or CD," he said. "That no longer being possible shifts [how we consume media] in a major way. And I don't think it's necessarily for the better.”
The renewed consumer appetite for physical media is a reaction to these changes, he said, pointing out that the experience of going out to rent a movie represented more than just the disc or VHS tape that one left the store with.
“I'm old enough to remember going to the video rental store and... shopping around for what I'm going to watch on this Friday night," he said.
"Now it's all about algorithms. It's really hard to find something to your liking in a fairly reasonable amount of time,” Willis said of Netflix’s streaming model.
At Strickly Nostalgia that old model of browsing for media you can share with friends remains alive and is the main attraction, Strickland said, recounting how customers stroll in on Friday and Saturday nights looking for something to watch.
"People love coming in here," he said. "There hasn't been an option [like this] around here in forever."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Olivia Pizzuco-Ennis grew up in Montreal and is a graduating student from the Université du Québec à Montréal's journalism program. Having worked in community radio, she is passionate about telling stories that help people understand their day. She is currently working for CBC Sudbury. You can reach her at olivia.pizzuco-ennis@cbc.ca.
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