The Future of DVDs and CDs?
The L.A. Times ran an interesting article on Best Buy yesterday, which lays out the idea that in the future only the hottest new DVD and CD titles will be physically available in their stores. Instead the store will be focusing on digital delivery of entertainment.
Classic films, in particular, will be increasingly difficult to find in a bricks and mortar Best Buy.
A Best Buy VP says "Most sales of DVDs happen in the first 10 weeks they are on sale, so after that we'll have to decide if the best place to stock it is in the store or online."
I rarely shop at Best Buy, but it's interesting to read about their future plans, particularly as it's possible other stores will follow suit.
Digital products may be convenient at times, but if you want to own a movie or music that can't "crash" and/or will not be withdrawn from availability by a digital provider, there's nothing like owning a hard copy of a DVD or CD. I'm not entirely old-fashioned -- I just downloaded a song from Amazon today (grin) -- but I think I will always prefer the idea of permanently owning something I can physically place on a shelf and retrieve whenever I wish.
posted by Laura @ 10:31 PM
3 Comments:
I'm in total agreement. Borders seems to be going the same route.
Yeah, I think they simply have no future. Here in Chile the main reason is piracy. One of the major cd/dvd stores, Feria del disco (something like "Cd fair") had to make a big change and now they sell mostly books (and now it's called Feria MIX). Another example is what's happening with Blockbuster, in my city they had to sell half of the building, and now it's like a tiny store.
And yes, you only find new titles available, classic movies are really hard to find in these mega stores.
If I was in the dvd business, I'll add some incentives to the buyer (because movies and music are really expensive), like posters or merchandising. Why can we have a classic movie poster when we buy our dvds?
This is not that great of an idea for people like me who do not download or purchase things online.
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