I don't think the physical item is the issue. I think the issue is that everything, the whole back catalog is free and readily available on-line. This has the effect of music being a right rather than privlege.While I personally feel the same we're all coming from the viewpoint of people who grew up with physical media. There was a big hubbab last year over an intern at NPR who claimed the opposite, and really who are we to argue with that? Just because I used to buy crappy tape bootlegs to fill out my manics and blur or whoever b-sides when i was 14 doesn't make me a better listener to music than someone who has immediate access to them.
here, this yoke:
A WSJ Intern Replies To NPR Intern Emily White's Controversial Post on Music Piracy - Speakeasy - WSJ
At the end of the day music isn't a physical item. There's an argument to be made for music that was specifically made for vinyl/cd/tape or whatever can maybe be appreciated best in the correct format but I don't see why any new music should be consumed this way. Maybe we should be concentrating on saving the planet and creating less physical crap.
I worked shit jobs in order to buy albums and when i bought one, even a bad one I had to get my moneys worth which meant listening to it every day for a week. Some things I hated. Some I hated at first then "got" them after a few listens. Sonic Youth took me ages to get into when I was 14 but it was well worth the effort. The internet should have made it easier for oddities like them to exist but it probably hasn't.
I wrote a longer explanation of this in my "google rock" rant about Psychic Teens it's in the reviews section.
Basically bands giving away everything for free is devaluing the medium that's my theory on this.
Didn't fleetwood Mac do an album promo thing where they played the whole thing prior to it's release on american radio just after the invention of C90 tapes. Everyone who could do taped it off the radio and as a result the record never really sold well at all. At least i think it was them anyway.
Same thing now only it's getting to a ridiculous stage.