Why do people bother buying and hoarding things like films, DVDs, CDs, mp3s, etc., etc.?
It seems to be quite a pointless and old fashioned exercise in this modern day and age.
Let’s examine the concept.
Let’s say I hear the latest from Skrillex. I decide I love it.
Now then, were this 40 years ago (Hey, wow, imagine if dubstep had actually been around in the 1970s, yay!), then my instinctive and only real option would have been to run off to a record store, purchase the single or album and bring it home and play it over and over again on my little record player.
Whenever I wanted to hear it again I would drag it out of its sleeve and wop it on the turntable. If I wasn’t at home, then maybe I could record from my record player onto a cassette and listen to the cassette recording on the move using, well, a portable cassette tape player.
In the context of what was available in the old days, I would have needed to have had my own collection of singles and albums in order to be able to instantly access any specific tune as the whim caught me.
Not today.
Today I do not need to actually own or hold my own personal copies of any song or tunes whatsoever. Why would I? Everything is instantly available online for the moment I want to hear it.
Any song I can think of, I can get to instantly play to me across a number of platforms, whether they be attached to my super-dooper hi-fi system, or to my mobile phone and associated headset. Indeed, even just starting at Youtube, I can search for and play not only any song from the last 100 years, but also I get to be able to watch the associated video as well. And it’s free. So, why should I need to store a copy of the song ‘locally’? That’s just senseless duplication, or over-the-top fanboiism, surely? Heck, I remember years ago when ‘fans’ would buy every format of their idol’s new song. But, for normal people there’s no longer a need to buy anything, it’s all already just there waiting for them to press play.
When Youtube isn’t the answer, there are plenty of streaming music sites. Some are free, others cost virtually nothing to subscribe to. Again, this gives me instant and unfettered access to whatever I want to hear, whenever I want to hear it. So, why would I also want to actually download a copy and store it locally, let alone buy a physical version? It’s all pointless, isn’t it?
I mean, if I lived at the seaside, why would I need to keep hundreds of barrels of seawater as well?
Some people boast about how many songs they have copies of. “My six different 3-terabyte portable drives store over 50-gazillion songs,” they’ll crow at me.
Well, nurr nurr nurrr, my collection is far far bigger than that and I didn’t have to buy anything to store it on, did I?
England's England 
Personally my rationale is- there are all these old records going around, and it would be a shame for them all to end up in landfill.
Or at least so I tell myself. Frankly there's some of your typical charity shop shelf-filler that would probably be better off in landfill, or better incinerated, were it not for the handful of octogenarians who still like it.
Yes, it's possible to stream music (legally), but sometimes you do need to subscribe. I can just as easily pick up the record for pennies from the nearest charity shop, and the local independent record store, one of the few left in existence, gives some away for free.
Possibly some obscure stuff is only available on record, also.
And some of us just like collecting stuff. Record collectors often will do it just for the thrill of chasing down that rare record.
Also consider that those streaming services require servers which need to be supplied with large amounts of power. My little MP3 player can store 4GB of stuff (small these days but adequate) and runs of a single AAA battery. I could transfer all my records, tapes and CDs to this one device, and may do so one day.
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