What's the best, most price effective way to share files physically to a large group of people?
Lets say you wanted to give out a movie at a fair, or distribute a self made game or a movie at a con, what would be the best medium to do that?
>Disk: My knee jerk reaction used to be to say any sort of disk. A disk with a jewel can cost together less than half a dollar for a consumer, if you skip the jewel it can go as low as 15 cents, it's also relatively easy to carry and disposable. but I've started hearing about more and more people saying they don't have a cd player anymore, that they have either removed it from their PC or will remove it when they get a new device. >question/problem 1) are people really getting rid of their cd players? Is the medium starting to fade from the world? is there anything to replace it
So now I've thought the only thing left is flash drives, but these can cost 5 bucks a pop for the very cheap ones, and even if you buy them at bulks of hundreds from a specialized order you'd have a hard time finding someone who goes below 2 bucks. That's 4 to 15 times the markup from a disk. That means giving away a hundred at an event or selling something short of 5 bucks will come at a serious loss, and quite the inconvenience.
I assume nobody uses cassette tapes anymore, but maybe I've been living under a rock, I haven't been asking. The only other medium I know of is blue ray. I honestly know nothing about blue ray besides that it's really good for film and that it has a specialized player. It's not as steep as paying for a bulk of flash drives, You can find a bulk of 50 for 36 bucks on amazon. 70 cents a disk isn't awful, but how many people actually have a blue ray player? Are there any physical mediums that are current that work well that I'm missing?
To sum up T L D R >what's the best way to distribute media physically? a disk? a flash drive? a blueray? >are disks a technology that's going out the door, if so, what's replacing it? Thanks.
Store the file in the cloud and give a card or printout with the URL or QR Code for them to retrieve the file.
Nicholas Rodriguez
That's a pretty smart solution, this does work really well for a lot of stuff, but what if lets say it's something that's 1) too big for a cloud or big enough that I wouldn't want it up there permanently 2) a product that is being bought, so a piece of paper with a url wouldn't be very appropriate. 3) something that I wouldn't want passed online cause paranoia. 4) given to people that may be complete neanderthals in terms of tech
And since you are already here, do you still have a disc/blueray player or is it really a medium on its way out the door?
Regardless, thanks for answering. super helpful.
Mason Allen
Most people use their phones as their main computer. DVDs are the next best thing, almost nobody has a Blu-ray drive on their computer.
Easton Johnson
Fair That's a good point you are making with the phone thing, since phones can oporate with sd cards, could that possibly be a medium? is there a type of sd card cheap enough that you could distribute it? Would the average person be able to put it into their phones and use it?
Once again I'd like to say, seriously thank you very much for the help. absolute mvp.
I'm working on some games and animation and I've looked for kicks at different ways to distribute and advertise it.besides online like selling them at cons or handing it out at events. Dug a little about physical mediums and was surprised to hear that some people stopped using CDs. Thought it might pay off to ask about it here. didn't want to specify exactly my problem cause I wanted to learn more in geenral about physical mediums in our day and age since apperantly I live under a damn rock. That cloud and note tip was helpful though so I guess that's thread.
But that sounds boring so feel free to believe I'm a secret agent looking for new ways to deliver nuclear files using the sharp minds at 4 channel dot org.
Levi Cox
>feel free to believe I'm a secret agent Not quite my line of thinking.
>I live under a damn rock that much is obvious how the fuck do you work on games and not know that people don't use CDs anymore? New computers don't even come with CD drives now
