Nowadays you can pay less than ten dollars a month and get access to an enormous catalog of tv shows and movies. You can listen to nearly every song from the past century for free (with the occasional advertisement). You can watch tv shows from Japan hours after they premier. It is quite scary how far things have come in such a short amount of time. It is extremely cheap and easy to consume anything and everything. On paper, this is good for consumers and creators. However, I believe this devalues content. When we can consume so much so quickly, we do not enjoy it nearly as much.
It is so common to watch an entire show on Netflix and once it is done, you think "what next?" With all the music in the world, do we really value the music we buy? How many people still buy music? Do we listen to it as much and actually form the powerful memories music creates? Soon the word buy will be foreign, a thing of the past, in regards to purchasing media.
I for one, do not want to have an unlimited access to all the music. I want to enjoy the music I already have. Most music is timeless (just look at classical music, still awesome today). A lot of the music I listen to today is the same as what I listened to ten years ago. Over the years, my music collection has not grown much. I do not know most of the top 40 songs, and I really don't care. Through different situations and parts of my life there is music that goes along with it. That feeling is so important.
When I listen to M. Ward's Duet for Guitars #2 I think about when I was learning to drive. When I listen to Bon Iver's For Emma I think about my freshmen year of college and the cool, crisp Vermont air. I really like that association, and I am not sure if that is possible by always listening to new music.
The movies I own are movies I really love. Schindler's List. The Lord of the Rings. Star Wars. A half-dozen or so of the Miyazaki films. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. I will occasionally go to the movies or buy a new movie, but I enjoy the ones I have. I find them fantastic, and I love rewatching them. I do not want to have a huge movie, record or game collection. I simply want to have what I love and can continually enjoy. A lot of media is timeless, I think that's really amazing. Let's not let unlimited destroy that.