The history of hominids making music goes back well more than 100K years; physical media has only existed for the last 147 of them. I think we're way too close to have any perspective as to whether physical media (containing recorded music) is a great ("permanent") advancement of our species or perhaps an anomalistic blip on the arc of human existence. I'd suggest one not get too attached to any form of physical media... it, too, will pass.

Thanks for your generous kindness without fail...

I did not have the icon Groucho Marx anymore alas!

@thecarpathian

"Neigh" - "the cry of a horse, a whinny."

"Nigh" - "near in time, place or relationship."

Just having a little fun.

But maybe the horse is mad about the media situation too.

We must distinguish legality and legitimacy...

It is impossible to say to ourselves if we are knowledge driven : ok this month i will not bought the 4 science and philosophical books whose price is 400 bucks in toto because i dont have the budget...

I will not download them illegally...No...

I will stay ignorant but in the legal path...

Only rich people and rich country can afford books , damn the poor...

Long life to the law...

The law was designed by an unknown genius : Bernard Mandeville in 1720...

A genius so great that Hayek in a special adress wrote about him : "he is our master to us all".

He did not say that for Adam Smith, nor Marx not Freud who all of them borrow to the master after his death.

Nobody know him today guess why ?

No i did not discovered this in an illegally acquired book but it is another story.

In Huxley as in Orwell hive ignorance is the only legal direction ...

«The eggs of the laws rarely birth the legitimate chicken»---Groucho Marx

Blake said it better than me using an imaginary Groucho though :

I apologize for my observation  slightly off-track but useful for further reading by those interested by the link between these thinkers... To understand we must often look off-track anyway...

We lost any physical products for an always increasing dematerialisation of not only our products but ourselves. We went from the Greek soma/psyche-Noûs/pneuma to be only the Bill Gates computing body.

We lost books and vinyl for digitalization and control... We are already under control.

I'm thinking with the age of most of the responders here, that the end of physical media will not be much of an issue...especially with LP and CD sales not only stabilizing but actually growing slightly in 2024...