Your CD Collection Knows Things Spotify Has Forgotten

I still own my CDs.

And before anyone asks, no, they are not scratched. They have been properly looked after. Some may eventually succumb to disc rot, but that is a chemical deterioration issue and not a custodial failure.

Recently, though, I realised that some of those supposedly obsolete pieces of plastic preserve something that our vastly more sophisticated streaming services do not.

Sometimes an old CD contains a song that is no longer available through streaming.

Sometimes the song is available, but the version on Spotify or Apple Music is not actually the same version that appeared on the physical release.

And sometimes a film or television program still exists somewhere but, without a physical copy, has become remarkably difficult for an ordinary person to see.

That raises an interesting intellectual property question:

What is the difference between owning a copy of something and merely having access to it?

When “the same song” isn't quite the same

One of the examples that prompted this thought was The Reefer Song by Mindless Drug Hoover.

The song appeared on a Triple J Hottest 100 compilation from the 1990s, and I still own the CD.

In the final chorus of the version on that CD, the name “Matthew” is used. Listen to the version now available through the major streaming platforms and you hear “Mindless” instead.

It's one word.

From an intellectual property perspective, however, that tiny difference illustrates something important.

When we say a song is “on Spotify”, we may really mean that Spotify has a recording of that song.

That doesn't necessarily mean it has the same recording, edit or master that appeared on a particular physical release decades ago.

Copyright can exist in the underlying musical work and lyrics, while separate copyright exists in the sound recording. There may also be different recordings, edits, mixes, remasters and other versions of substantially the same song.

A physical CD therefore preserves something quite specific: a particular version of a particular recording at a particular point in time.

The streaming catalogue can change around it.

Buying a copy isn't buying the copyright

There is an important distinction here.

When I bought a CD, I did not buy the copyright in the music.

Owning the CD doesn't entitle me to manufacture thousands of copies and sell them, or upload the album for everybody else to download.

What I did acquire was ownership of a physical object containing an authorised copy.

If the record label subsequently changes distributors, renegotiates licences, withdraws an album or decides that a particular version is no longer commercially worthwhile, nobody can remotely alter the copy sitting in my collection.

Streaming operates differently.

When we subscribe to Spotify, Apple Music, Netflix or another streaming platform, we generally aren't buying copies of the works in its catalogue.

We are paying for access to the catalogue the service is entitled to provide at that particular time and in that particular territory.

Those rights may depend upon record labels, distributors, producers, performers, territories, licence periods, underlying copyright and contracts negotiated years or decades earlier.

If those arrangements change, so can the catalogue.

When a work exists but isn't available

This distinction isn't confined to music.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is a 1970 British political satire starring Peter Cook and co-written by Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

It remains a remarkably prescient satire of polling, political manipulation and the manufacture of public opinion.

It has also become extraordinarily difficult to see.

The film still exists. Copyright still exists. Physical copies exist.

But if a work isn't currently licensed to a streaming service or broadcaster and you don't have access to a physical copy, it can become practically invisible to an ordinary audience.

That is worth remembering when we describe the internet as though it were a permanent cultural archive.

It isn't.

Digital access remains dependent upon rights, contracts and commercial decisions.

Disappearance doesn't have to be permanent

Dogma, Kevin Smith's 1999 film, provides an interesting counter-example.

For years, the film was notoriously difficult to access legitimately because of its unusual rights history.

Eventually, its rights position changed and the film became legitimately available again.

A work can therefore disappear from ordinary digital access and later return.

Its cultural importance hasn't changed in the meantime.

The rights chain has.

When the original archive is gone

The most dramatic example may be early Doctor Who.

When the program began in the 1960s, television was regarded very differently from today. Videotape was expensive. There was no DVD market, no home streaming and no expectation that viewers decades later would want every episode permanently available on demand.

After programs were broadcast and copies created for overseas distribution, videotapes were sometimes wiped and reused.

The consequence was extraordinary: large numbers of early Doctor Who episodes disappeared from the BBC's own archive.

But not everything disappeared.

Copies had travelled.

Overseas broadcasters retained film recordings. Private collectors acquired copies. Fans recorded television soundtracks onto reel-to-reel tape. Pieces of footage survived in private hands.

Those materials subsequently became part of efforts to recover and reconstruct missing episodes.

Surviving audio, photographs, telesnaps and animation have allowed otherwise lost stories to be experienced again.

And even decades later, supposedly lost episodes continue to turn up in private collections.

There is something remarkable about that.

The institution that originally created and broadcast the work lost its copy. Someone else kept one.

Physical media as distributed cultural preservation

We tend to assume that preservation is someone else's job.

Surely the studio keeps its films. The broadcaster keeps its programs. The record company keeps its masters.

History demonstrates that this assumption isn't always safe.

Commercial organisations make commercial decisions. Storage costs money. Companies disappear or merge. Formats become obsolete. Rights expire. Contracts may not contemplate new technologies. Works that appear commercially insignificant at one point in time may be neglected.

Physical media creates something valuable almost accidentally: redundancy.

Thousands or millions of copies of a book, record, CD or DVD can be distributed across different homes, libraries, archives and countries.

None of those copies depends upon one central server continuing to make the work available.

A person who kept a CD for thirty years probably wasn't intending to become an archivist.

Sometimes, however, that is precisely what happened.

Tangible copies of intangible rights

This creates an elegant contrast with copyright itself.

Copyright protects intangible subject matter.

A musical work is not the piece of plastic on which a recording is stored.

A film is not its DVD.

A novel is not the individual printed book sitting on your shelf.

But intangible works remain culturally accessible because copies of them exist somewhere.

Streaming has given us extraordinary convenience and an enormous catalogue of material for comparatively little money. It also provides legitimate markets for creators and makes global distribution possible in ways that physical media never could.

This isn't an argument against streaming.

It is an argument for understanding what streaming actually provides.

When you buy a physical copy, you generally own that copy. When you subscribe to a streaming service, you generally buy access.

And access is conditional.

Your old CD might be an archive

Which brings me back to my Triple J CD.

I didn't buy it because I thought I was preserving Australian music history.

I probably bought it because compilation CDs were an economical way to acquire a lot of songs I liked without buying every artist's album.

Yet decades later, it preserves a version of a recording that differs from the version most listeners will now encounter through streaming.

Suddenly, that old CD isn't simply nostalgic clutter.

It is evidence.

It records what was actually released at a particular moment in time.

So the next time someone asks why you still own CDs, DVDs, records or books when everything is supposedly available online, there is a perfectly respectable answer:

Online is not the same thing as permanent.

Streaming is not the same thing as ownership.

Sometimes physical media preserves a version. Sometimes it preserves access.

And sometimes it preserves the work itself.

Disclaimer: This blog is intended for general educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. You should obtain advice tailored to your circumstances before acting on any information discussed in this episode.