Our cultural lives reduced to apps, streaming services

We no longer own the culture we consume; we rent it. From music to movies, books to personal archives, shelves have been replaced by subscriptions controlled by global platforms. There was a time when you could read a person’s life across their living room. Their shelves gave them away: albums played after breakups, books carried on holidays, guilty pleasure films.

Now when you finish a book or fall in love with a song, there is almost nothing to show for it. Shelves are mostly filled with decorative items, music lives behind an app on our phones, and films are streamed through our televisions. Ownership has been replaced by access, something that comes with terms and conditions which most of us never read.

This shift happened gradually and promised convenience. The ability to stream and access everything all at once from anywhere and everywhere. In exchange, you agree to let go of keeping. As a result, personal history – bookmarked pages, scratched discs, handwritten notes, all disappeared. Culture stopped leaving marks.

The disappearance of physical media goes beyond a change in habit, it reflects a structural shift in how culture is organised and controlled. As professor and researcher in communication studies at the University of Nicosia with a focus on digital media, platforms, news media infrastructure, and how technology reshapes culture, power and public life Nicholas Nicoli puts it, “we have moved from a culture of ownership to a culture of temporary access.”

Instead of purchasing and keeping cultural objects, we now subscribe to platforms that determine what is accessible, for how long, and with what conditions. “There is a feeling of abundance,” Nicoli says, “but it is not really ours. Media has become less like a personal library and more like a constantly changing catalogue that we never truly control.”

Even when we do purchase something, ownership is not guaranteed. “I have bought hundreds of books that I read on my Kindle,” he adds. “Are they mine, though? Do I see them on my shelves? No, not really.” The question is not hypothetical. “If Amazon were one day acquired by another company and that company decided to discontinue Kindle, what would that mean for the books its customers have purchased?”

Of course, there is no denying what streaming offers us. “We gain convenience, scale and immediacy, almost unlimited content at the click of a button,” Nicoli says. But that convenience comes at a cost. “At the same time, we give up control, permanence and autonomy.”

There is clear shift in power that is moving away from individuals towards platforms becoming more centralized. “Platforms decide what is visible, what disappears, and what is prioritised by algorithms… Ease replaces agency.”

Physical media did more than just store content, it moved with us through different stages of life, travelled between homes, survived breakups, came with us on adventures, it accumulated meaning. As Nicoli notes, “physical media carries memory through touch, use and personal history.” Streaming removes these attachments, fading the way culture is remembered and visited. “Content can vanish without warning. This makes both personal and collective remembrance more fragile.”

When culture exists predominantly through streaming, it is no longer something we come back to, but something we move past. Without physical traces, personal memory has little to hold onto. What once built up in the background of our lives now passes through us without ever setting.

“There is an erosion of narrative structure,” Nicoli explains. “A beginning, a middle and an end.” What remains is endless scrolling, shaped by algorithms rather than intention.

The shift from ownership to access has also reshaped the balance of power. Platforms dictate not only what we have access to but also for how long. “Platforms decide what is visible, what disappears, and what is prioritised by algorithms,” Nicoli explains.

The redistribution of power affects not only audiences but also creators. Artists and writers depend on systems they cannot see, while audiences lose the ability to keep or revisit culture that matters to them. As Nicoli notes, “power shifts decisively toward platforms,”

Smaller countries like Cyprus face a greater degree of danger. Large international platforms are focused on broad appeal and commercial gains, while smaller communities and their work are often sidelined. “Without strong local support and archiving,” Nicoli says, “cultural visibility becomes dependent on external corporate priorities.”

This reliance has become very real: “Europe’s dependence on US-based platforms, Hollywood’s dependence on streaming, and news media’s dependence on social platforms are increasingly being recognised as risks,” he says. This worry now applies to not only how we use cloud services and AI tools to hold personal and national memories.

As personal collections turn into online accounts and national archives are kept on private platforms, it becomes harder to say who really owns them. “Both personal memories and national cultural records are increasingly stored on platforms outside public or individual control,” Nicoli warns, making them vulnerable to removal, modification, or shifting corporate priorities.

Asked to summarise the core risk in a single sentence, his answer is stark: “When we lose ownership of culture, we lose the power to decide what deserves to last.” And in a world where almost everything feels available, we may not notice until it’s too late.