Upgrading my Netflix account today from five discs out at a time to six, I paused at the the thought of just how much of my entertainment is rented versus being outright purchased.
I get two discs of video game entertainment out at a time from GameFly and most of the music I listen to on an average day comes streaming through a monthly account through Rhapsody.
I used to be opposed to the idea of entertainment that you didn’t own, but the reality of the situation has started to change my way of thinking. I still buy games, movies and music, but only for products that I know I’ll watch or play quite often.
However, for games I’m unsure of or movies that I’ll only watch once or twice, it’s not only cheaper to rent as part of one of those services, but it also makes for less clutter as I don’t have unused boxes of discs sitting on a shelf taking up space.
The same is true for music through Rhapsody. I have several gigs of ripped audio tracks that often just sit on my harddrive doing nothing. While harddrive space is getting cheaper every day, I’m just as happy streaming something across my high-speed broadband connection. It’s one less thing to slow down disc defragmentation and something I don’t have to worry about backing up.