The landscape for home video is changing rapidly, with major retailers cutting back or eliminating the category. The most recent announcements were from Best Buy, Target, and Netflix.
Best Buy, which championed the new DVD format in the 90s and continued to sell discs through the Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD eras, will stop selling discs in its over 1000 stores and online beginning early next year, according to Variety. Not only was Best Buy a major retailer in the category, it was also home to frequent retailer exclusives featuring collector-focused options.
Meanwhile, Target is cutting back the DVD and Blu-ray space in its stores, perhaps a final reduction before eliminating the category entirely, according to Media Play News.
Netflix also dropped its red envelope DVD service as of the end of September, the company announced. Netflix was founded as a disc rental service, with a monthly subscription replacing per-disc fees, and had been shipping them for the past 25 years.
These three recent changes come in the wake of other moves over the past 12 months, including Ingram Entertainment exiting the business on the wholesale level in September, and Walmart cutting disc space by 20% last fall, according to Media Play News.
The market for physical home media has shrunk from $24 billion in 2006 to a little over $2 billion last year, according to the report, in the same range as the comics and hobby games markets.
While the number of releases is shrinking, it’s clear that there remains a market of consumers, including collectors, for physical home media. At one time, geek culture stores, including comic stores, frequently sold DVDs, including superhero, science fiction, horror, and anime and other animation fare. Most left the business after unrelenting price competition from mass merchants and Amazon. With a lot less competition, we wonder whether independent retailers could once again profitably offer DVDs and Blu-ray, focusing on the genre and collectible sides of the business. Developing.
Source: ICV2
