It'll be fascinating to see how our relationship with books plays out over the next 10-20 years. On one hand, unlike music, books are very physical objects, their content very much associated with their form, used by many as decoration within their home. On the other hand, most of us only read most of our books once. I suspect that many, like me, then hang onto those books primarily for sentimental reasons (along with the slim chance that someone else might want to borrow them, future children might want to read them, we might re-read them one day, but probably never will), but that feels very much like a cultural fad, albeit quite a long-lived one!
I'm aware of that (my father had quite an extensive 'wall' of vinyl, and I've had bookshelves of CDs in the past, too) but I don't think music-as-display-item was quite in the same league. It was more for real enthusiasts whereas pretty much everyone displayed books, and for a much longer period of history.
Well, printed books have been around a lot longer than "printed" music, so of course, there was a time when people (who were lucky/rich enough to own books) displayed books because they had nothing else to display. That's not really a fair comparison, nor one that makes sense in this context.
I also think you're really underplaying how people enjoy their music collections. I hold on to records for the same reasons you hold on to books.
The next few decades will be interesting. Just like how vinyl has received an increase in popularity for many reasons, if this Kindle Unlimited type of distribution for the written word takes off like digital distribution did for music, you should fully expect hip young people in 2044 to start buying books again.
No, I totally understand about music collections. I still buy new albums on CD, despite the fact that I mainly take advantage of Amazon's instant MP3 delivery (autorip?) [1] which means the original CDs might even never get played. I simply cannot shake that sentimental need to own/collect an object that I can associate with that album. I truly think this is unhealthy behaviour, though, one which the human race will overcome, but that I personally probably will not.
I'm guessing [2] you hold onto records not just because of your attachment to the physical object, but also because you get them out and play them from time-to-time. I hold onto countless books that I will almost certainly never read again.
[1] Yes, I'm aware that, in some people's eyes, this makes me the worst kind of philistine, but I'm a music fan, not an audiophile.
[2] With apologies if that's not the real reason you hold onto records :)
Hurricane season and electrical outages will still exist in 15 years and paper has proved to be the only storage medium that doesn't change every 20 years.
Hurricane season and electrical outages won't wipe out your Amazon library (stored in the cloud), while a hurricane might wipe out your paper library. Also, it might actually be easier to find a 30 year old book on Amazon than a paper version.
On the other hand, Amazon going bankrupt will wipe out your cloud library.
BTW, 20 years ago was 1994, and PDF was initially released in 1993.
