Welcome to Shareware.zone!

Apologies for the broken pages, this is a very new site still under construction. Things should be tidier soon!

Physical media is expiring. Brick and mortar stores are starting to phase everything out while some publishers are considering halting physical releases altogether. Meanwhile the consequences of streaming media being the primary/sole outlet for films and television shows are… more apparent than ever. You have pigs like Zaslav who are content to ditch completed projects instead of paying royalties, and then claim writers are overpaid (while taking in a massive salary for his failed merger).

But you don’t have to participate. You can continue to utilize (and share) physical media. You can retain ownership over the media you buy. You can enjoy higher quality, be safe from anyone else restricting your access, and still enjoy it when your internet goes out. Plus, by purchasing physical media again, you can help keep the numbers alive to convince the industry to keep producing it.

The barrier to entry for consuming physical media can be pretty low: You buy the medium (movie on LD/VHS/DVD/BluRay, music on cassette/CD/vinyl, etc.) and the required player, connect it up and enjoy. DVDs and BluRays can be played in game consoles going back 20 years now, as can CDs. VHS and cassettes get a little more complicated to enjoy, and vinyl playback can be an expensive rabbit hole, but it’s all doable. Managing your collection, digitizing it, preserving it, streaming it locally – those things get messy.

Shareware.zone is dedicated to providing or compiling the resources to get you moving through this process with as little friction as possible.