Even though a person locally owns and has a piece of software downloaded and installed to their hard drive, that storage space is useless without an internet connection to verify it is legitimate. This greatly restricts the use of the media you allegedly “own.” Playing games or using software that use this sort of DRM protection is no longer possible on laptops in places without connection, such as airplanes.

If The Boys has a flaw, it’s the franchise’s much-celebrated violence and gore. Because the show prides itself on the sort of hyperrealism that is generally avoided in superhero flicks (how, after all, can Flash punch someone at super speed without dismembering them) a few characters meet a tremendously bloody end in every show. Obviously, some fans relish this. I find the gore self-indulgent and believe it distracts from the generally fantastic plotting that punctuates each season.

It goes without saying that the Internet and digital software have radically changed the ways we consume, create, and interact with art, not least of all music. It’s no wonder then that Patreon was co-founded by a financially-frustrated musician: Jack Conte, one-half of the duo Pomplamoose, themselves early pioneers in the viral-video potential of YouTube. But ad-based revenue, Conte explains, wasn’t earning the band nearly enough money to cover the costs of their production, let alone basic living expenses. 

When Taylor Swift’s 1989 album became the only record of the year to reach platinum level, that was the second biggest news in music of 2014.  The most important news of the year in the industry came when Swift pulled her entire catalogue from the popular streaming service Spotify one week after the release of her album.  The move, more so than spark a heated though admittedly civil battle between Swift and Spotify, has opened the gates to a debate about the future of the music industry. 

Media platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and even Amazon have all released successful series this past season. They have lured big-time writers and directors like Weed's Jenji Kohan and “Fight Club’s” David Fincher. TV is now drawing big-time players like Matthew McCaughey (True Detective), Martin Scorsese (Boardwalk Empire), and John Goodman (Alpha House) to the small screen,  which was unthinkable 10 years ago.Yet this “Golden Age” in TV also means fierce competition. With the rise in popularity of digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, the television landscape has been severely altered. 

How movies are made will affect the format of the home-video and video rentals. VHS had petered out by the mid-2000s with the introduction of the DVD. The DVD format had a higher resolution and better sound quality than VHS, but it was expensive to remaster films for the new format This issue has repeated itself with the existence of Blu-ray discs -- most classic films aren’t available on Blu-ray because of the digital and photochemical process it takes to change formats. But more and more companies are switching to streaming.