The simple answer is no, it’s not. To put this into perspective let’s dive a little deeper into what media as a whole is today. Clouds baby, clouds everywhere and everyday, doesn’t quite look that shiny for physical media, be it discs or tapes of any kind for that matter. Think about this, when was the last time you actually used a DVD or  CD, let alone burning one?

Let’s go back in time, in the 90s, the good old days of software, when the suspicious dude on the corner had drugs and pirated discs in his coat. Remember the time when hardware was actually expensive, when you could sometimes afford a cdrom, when you had to choose between a 1x speed cdwriter or speakers or maybe a cheap ass lpt printer. Let’s go back to 1999, everybody is using Microsoft Windows 98, it worked for daily office and home operations, sucked at games. The internet was in it’s infancy, those 56k modems made your telephone lines catch on fire just by trying to access your email account. Magazines were a thing back then, pc games, software, music and videos. Not anybody could afford to purchase them, as I kid I was so very happy when I could run a disc on my computer, didn’t matter what content was on that disc, it was something, anything.

Tis’ the year 2000, a new version of Windows with the same name came along to the masses and also Windows Me. Back in the day, an operating system gave you exactly what you needed, which is nothing, a graphical user interface and some pre-installed software. That was all. People started to afford more and more digital media on discs so content was flying everywhere. Piracy was gaining grown, heck, it actually became a standard, especially in Europe.

Enter Nero, the software that everyone  wanted and needed at the same time. This mighty piece of software offered a user the possibility to back-up, rip and create content from and on physical discs. Windows never offered such features like burning data until Windows 2000, and it sucked bad, really bad.

The business of physical media was booming worldwide, discs after discs, Nero Burning ROM became a household name. Most Windows installations from 2000 and XP had some version of Nero installed somewhere on the hard drive, not because it was needed, but it could come in handy sometime, maybe. Nero was media culture, remember when they tried going multi platform.

While the glory days of Windows XP I was also running linux, which had k3b, the nero alternative for linux and unix systems. Fear not, at one point Nero came out with a linux version, a nice .deb package for Debian derivatives. Never gained traction on opensource operating systems. Mac OS, never released a version.

Then Vista came along, there were some intended issues towards Nero products, yeah, intentionally made by Microsoft. Version 6 on Vista? Not even once! Vista came with some built-in disc features, that’s why.

To be honest, after version 7 around the time of Vista I personally stopped using it. Why? Internet speeds were good, flash drives became cheaper, p2p was a thing and there were websites with downloads for anything.

Enter the “free army”, and by that I mean the bunch of alternative software for burning discs. Dozens of them, free that offer the same thing, maybe even more. Yeah, you’d might get the occasional ad while starting the app, but nobody is willing to pay money anymore for useless software.

Ever heard of Ashampoo? Well, Nero, that was the final nail in the coffin for you when it comes to burning software.

To be honest, I still make a music cd or two per year and even those are rewritable. Yeah, I have an old Sony Xplod player in my car, but I usually use an audio jack connected to my phone so discs are getting more and more irrelevant to me.

If you’ll look at the Nero products today you’ll see some burning software to maintain the legacy and some bullshit mobile apps to sync and throw files around here and there. Nothing worth a penny, in my honest opinion.

So, physical media like CDs are mostly dead, such as the business of software for this kind of media types. There’s only one obvious conclusion, Nero is kind of dead in the water. Maybe they will survive with those mobile apps and that media home crap, I can’t say for sure. Maybe bundle software with hardware like they did back in the day….

Like most good things, they must come to an end, eventually. All that is left from my point of view is pure nostalgia. I salute you Nero, for making the y2ks awesome!