DVD & Blu-ray Sales For Week Ended 10/1/22
Image Credit: Media Play News
While music revenues and volumes for vinyl and streaming continue to grow, the same cannot be said of DVD and Blu-ray discs whose unit sales, so far this year, falling by approximately 33%. With DVD unit sales falling from 1.85 million to 1.29 million (-30%) and Blu-ray falling from 820,000 to 490,000 (-41%).
Compared to the same week one year ago, sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs have fallen by $26.09 million or 23.29%. With DVD sales dropping $15.18 million or 27.3% and Blu-ray revenue dropping $10.91 million or 16.9%. That was despite the average cost of a DVD rising 0.8% and a Blu-ray by 5.2%.
Image Credit: Media Play News
So while Blu-ray disc sales continue to grow as a percentage of the total video disc sales, their absolute number continues to drop.
According to data compiled by VideoScan / MediaPlayNews and tabularized by Yoeri Geutskens.
The total video disc market is still clearly in decline in the US (and globally) and does not appear to be recovering after the Covid 19 delays of new disc releases due to theatrical releases being postponed or moved to streaming. In the US, video disc sales fell 25.5% from $3.29 billion in 2019 to $2.45 billion in 2020 and an additional 20% to $1.97 billion in 2021. In the first quarter of 2022, video disc sales continued their decline with an additional 19% drop year-over-year.
This is not good news for the physical media lovers like myself. A continuing decline in physical media sales will eventually hit a level where studios etc. will not find the business profitable enough to continue to support and/or will continue to raise prices making owning said media very expensive. Eventually pushing even more users out of the video disc physical media market and over to the more convenient and lower quality streaming options.
Either way the long term future of video physical media is not looking too bright at the moment. Has convenience, and maybe cost, once again trumped quality?
