When should you buy content?

With the range of services you can use online like NetFlix that let you watch as many TV Shows and Movies as you want, or subscription based music services that let you listen to whatever you want whenever you want there is a question you need to ask - when should you buy content?

Buying content is defined in the traditional sense that is you pay a price and get the content to keep.  Whereas renting content can be defined as buying a subscription for access to content which allows you to access the content so long as you are subscribed, but you don't get to keep it, so when your subscription ends so does access to the content.

In the two scenarios, the former, buying content, without a doubt will cost the most in the long term.  The latter will cost less, the only catch is that when you stop your subscription you can't access the content.

Buying content only makes sense if you are going to watch the content hundreds of times or you need access to it without an internet connection.  I say this because when most people buy DVDs for instance they don't watch every DVD they own hundreds of times.  In fact some DVDs you own you've probably only watched once or twice at the most.

We have over a hundred DVDs, I know people that have extensive collections that take up entire rooms, but really there's only so many times you can watch every one of them.  Even if you don't do anything but watch DVDs all day and all night there will still be a limit to the number you can conceivably watch.  There comes a point were you will have redundant content.  That is content that you have, but don't need, and probably never use.

If you have 200 DVDs and you paid £15 for each one then you will have spent £3,000 on DVDs.  NetFlix membership costs £6 per month, with the first month free.  For the cost of your DVDs you could have paid for 500 months + 1 free of NetFlix, that's 41 years and 9 months.  Now consider the fact that membership of £6 per month gives you access to NetFlix entire library with near unlimited usage.  When you compare the two scenarios, the latter, renting content, makes more sense economically arguably it leads to greater freedom in content choice as well.

Now I realise this entire blog post sounds like an advert for NetFlix but the concept doesn't just apply to it, it applies to a number of other things.  I do question whether in a world that seems to push people towards buying things, how much could we save if we rented things instead?  Consider your car.  If you buy a car that car becomes your sole responsibility, your upkeep.  You need to pay for repairs, it likely costs a fortune in the first place.  Consider the cost of renting a car instead.  You rent the car for a fixed term and then rent another.  You get a new car each time.  Repairs and upkeep are the responsibility of the company you rent it from.  Really the only thing you pay for is the rent and the fuel.

I live in a Western country, arguably one that is considered capitalist and one that promotes the capitalist idea of the ownership of private property but truth be told I have to question whether it actually makes sense to buy things and own them as opposed to renting and using them.  Movies are just an example of this idea.