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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Very good point. I'm 27, and still remember a time of buying books, CDs and movies in the late 90s.

Anyone 21 or younger here who can say roughly what the opinion on buying things is among people your age?

It won't be wholly accurate, as my opinion on buying things (for example) changed as I got more disposable income.

I am 22. Back when I was a kid I torrented everything. Now I don’t pirate much at all. A previous poster hit the nail on the head, it’s all about time and money. When I was a kid I had no money and tons of time. Any money I was able to scrape together from part time jobs went to buying hardware and other things (bikes, musical instruments, etc.). Anything that wasn’t physical I just considered free for the taking. Not because I made up some moral crutch, I just couldn’t afford it and I wanted it. I don’t have a ton of money now, but I have a lot less time than I used. Two things spring up from this. Firstly, I desire a lot less content. I simply don’t have the time to play all of the games I used to play and watch all of the TV shows/movies that I watched as a kid. Secondly I don’t mind paying because now I have some spare money and there is a lot less content that I will be paying for. I think people underestimate the amount of children/jobless people who are using torrents.

People who have the money will pay for content if it’s presented to them in an attractive way at a reasonable price. I never pirate movies, because why bother? I can rent them from Amazon/Google for a few dollars or get them from a redbox that is a couple hundred feet from my apartment. I wait for TV shows to be on Netflix/Hulu, even though I might be behind a season or so but who cares? Same with movies, I don’t care anymore if I have to wait a year for a movie to go on amazon/Netflix/google. If I have to wait awhile or I forget about a movie and never see it then oh well the world still turns.

I do have to admit that I never pay for music though. I prefer to pay for live shows. To me music has always been free simply because of the radio. I know technically, it’s not because of advertisements, but that’s how it feels to me. That being said if I would be much more apt to buy music if I could buy it directly from the artist at a reasonable price (ie 5-10 dollars for an album), especially if the quality was high (320kbps mp3 or flac). That’s part of the reason why I don’t like mp3 services like amazon and itunes, the bitrate just isn’t high enough for me. I didn’t spend hundreds of dollars for nice headphones to listen to poorly encoded music, and I don’t live in the 90’s anymore so I’m not going to buy a cd.

In regards to ebooks, I think the belief that books are free has already been ingrained in culture due to librarys. Until I was an adult I never bought a book. Even now the only books I really buy are technical books. I rent everything else from the library. I don’t like ebooks, but if I did I would likely rent them as well.

I'm 22 (close enough to under 21), and my opinion on buying things depends on the type of media.

I buy plenty of games on Steam (usually during sales) & the Humble Bundles. They are a cheap, legitimate way for me to play a large array of games, and I'm more than happy to support the developers.

For books, I have a Kindle and tend to pirate ebook copies of books I own already in physical form. I'll also pirate audiobooks & ebooks on occasion if I can. Not a a big fan of audible & amazon DRM.

For music, I have a Spotify Premium account and listen to the vast majority of my music from there. I have a big back-catalog of pirated music from before I got my Spotify account. I have a handful of CDs that I bought as a child, but mostly just pirated since the dawn of broadband internet.

For TV Shows, I have a Netflix Account & Amazon Prime account. I also pay for Verizon FiOS cable, and get HBO/Showtime. I use HBO Go and whatever the Showtime app is called to watch those shows. I sometimes pirate episodes of shows I watch if I happen to miss watching them, can't see them on Hulu, or didn't record for whatever reason.

For movies, I buy Blu-Rays only on occasions where I want the HD experience. Think concert Blu-Rays and things like Planet Earth or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like I said, Netflix/Amazon Prime/HBO/Showtime get me through a lot of movies. If I can't find them there, I'll pirate them.

The reason I subscribe to these things and still pirate is basically a lack of $$. The services I pay for are a relatively cheap way to see a lot of content, and I would probably not go out and buy more DVDs/CDs/games if I couldn't subscribe to these or get great deals on Steam.

I do, however, intend to purchase far more content when my bills aren't so overwhelming. I also cannot forsee myself encouraging my kids someday to pirate material. I feel like I'd be instilling a value into them that I'm not particularly proud of, and without a doubt if they can say "but dad does it!" it'll be hard to explain to them why they should not.

This echoes my usage patterns as well, and I'm 37; the only difference is I had a reasonable CD collection (~250 discs) before I met Napster and AudioGalaxy back in the late 90s.

I only ever rented VHS/DVDs and I buy blu-ray used and only if I want to own a re-watchable experience (Dark Knight, The 300, Pulp Fiction, etc.) First-run blu-ray movies are RedBoxed or downloaded in 720p x264 from usenet (RIP NZBmatrix) and deleted after viewing.

Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Pandora/Spotify round out content. I watch more stuff now that I don't have cable (around 2hrs/day) than when I did (30min. or less/day).

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