One of the plan was to offer a bundled experience to the labels: you sell a physical media and the customer gets a code to add the album to their streaming library so they can also consume it digitally.
Edit/PS: It really feels strange arguing for an idea, I've given up on so long ago...
To think of a totally different possible trajectory of a technology is a bit like reading counterhistorical fiction. The interesting part isn’t just the assertion of something different but in considering the various second order effects.
Honestly, this is a lot of what I like about bandcamp. (I really hope that epic buying them isn't a bad sign, on that note...)
It's nice to get a cd or a cassette, with some fancy holofoil cover on it, a little artifact of a band I like, and still have it on my phone, in my browser, whenever I want to listen to it. I could dig out the actual equipment to play those things directly, but usually that's a pain, and I just want to have them as a totem or something.
I suppose something like that would be possible with NFC (with write durability improvements). The NFC holds a token allowing for the play of a particular album. For each non-cached play, a new token is generated and sent to the NFC. The album represented by the NFC can then be loaned or resold like the old way of physical media. Maybe even let the NFCs go bad after a few thousand token rewrites just like how vinyl and tapes wear out. It would have no improvement over old media other than having a large and fragile IT infrastructure.
Vinyl record sales outperformed CDs in the US for the first time since 1987, according to a new report. Just over 41 million vinyl records were sold in 2022, to the tune of $1.2bn (£.99bn). Only 33 million CDs were sold, amounting to $483m.
https://www.bbc.com/news/64919126.amp