re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I'm in my late-twenties and buy a hell of a lot less than I used to.

The only time I'll purchase an album now is if its a limited edition or not available on Spotify. I pre-ordered the latest Go! Team album just to get the free t-shirt (and to have it on my iPhone and iPad before I leave to Mexico which is the day the album comes out). The only time I'll purchase a Blu-ray now if its if its a movie I need to own and I can get it with some sort of deal or discount. Even with a MoviePass subscription, I've gone to theaters less in the past six months than I've had at least in the past five years. With the ability to preload on current consoles, the need to even buy physical video games is now dwindling. All of my last video game purchases for the past four months were all done digitally. To note, only two games were purchased at "full price" (Halo: MCC and Call of Duty: AW).

Even my mother, who is technologically unsavvy, knows how to rent and purchase movies digitally from services like Amazon and Vudu through her Roku.

The need for physical media is dwindling every day, but it won't go entirely away until internet and cellular providers stop capping data bandwidth and we have devices with a plethora of storage available to us without breaking the bank.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

(On a tangent).

When I was a teenager and young adult, I had a huge attachment to physical media for music (ie. vinyl records and later cds). On the other hand back in the day, I had very little to no attachment to physical media for movies (and tv shows). In those days as far as I was concerned, music was "sacred/holy" while movies + tv shows were completely "disposable".

When I reached middle age, it was the reverse. These days I'm not into music anymore, while movies/tv show have become a huge focal point for me.

For about a 7-8 year time period during the mid-late 2000's, I had almost zero attachment to physical media of any kind. (ie. Very little to no interest in cds and dvds/blurays). At the present time, I'm slowly reverting back to this phase of almost zero interest in physical media, largely due to burnout.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

It sounds like bullshit to me too. I absolutely do not believe the "older" generation is still buying physical media at the same rate they always have. Back in the heyday of DVD in the late 90s/early 2000s people would buy thousands of DVDs due to the numerous online sales and such. Nobody is doing that anymore with Blu-ray. Heck, there are plenty of members on this very site who have a DVD collection numbering into the thousands but yet their Blu-ray collection is very tiny in comparison.

I, for one, used to be one of those people who would gobble DVDs up like they were hotcakes. Now, however, I buy maybe 3 or 4 movies on disc per year. I only buy the movies that I absolutely love and will re-watch over and over. The rest of the movies that I only watch once, I am perfectly fine with "renting" them via digital. I suspect the majority of people are like this. People are certainly not buying Blu-ray at the same rate as they did DVD in the early 2000s.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Then these "industry insiders" are fucking morons. Everyone, young and old, is buying less physical media than they did 10 years ago, even hard-core collectors.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I think that's just wishful thinking on the part of those "insiders".

Blu-ray was going to struggle because people were realizing that they owned too many movies they weren't watching.

It really had less to do with HD DVD or the economy.

In the early 2000s many people bought lots of DVDs between $7-$25 a title and then looked at their 300 piece collection and probably said to themselves "I have $4000 sitting on a shelf that I never use!"

To me, that was the most compelling factor for people. Picture quality with 1080p and lossless audio wasn't going steer them back to their old spending habits.

For most, less money and/or less clutter is the just the new way of watching movies.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I think he's referring to the "replacement" group eschewing physical media: those starting out with disposable income replacing those who stopped collecting or have died.

Likely most people who have collected for years are buying less, with no real correlation as to the rate of buying less vs. age group (especially for those who have been collecting for 10 years or more).

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I may be one of those "replacements". (Albeit starting out in middle age with some disposable income).

I don't know how large a "replacement" group consisting of middle aged people would be, whom suddenly started buying tons of dvds/blurays.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

For the record, I’m a Millennial and last Friday I bought TWO CDs.

In all seriousness though, I don’t think this is a problem you can place squarely on Millennials. I work with a lot of boomers and Gen Xers who are doing the exact same thing; they’re not buying a lot of physical media and are moving to or using streaming/digital services. But I also know a shit load of people who have never been big physical media buyers. I don't think anyone on here is delusional about how well DVDs sold during the prior decade, but I do think some are delusional about how much importance the general public placed on owning DVDs.

And regarding Millennials, something to remember is most, if not all of us, are in pretty shitty financial shape. I myself am over 30K in debt and only clear slightly over 2K a month. Most of my paycheck goes towards my car payment, loan payments, and bills/various living expenses. The money I have left, I would rather save than spend on a bunch of movies I’m probably only going to watch once.

That doesn't mean I’m not buying physical media anymore, I still am. It's just that my spending has shifted over the last few years from DVDs and Blu-ray's to comic books, video games, and CDs, which I feel I do get more value/replay/enjoyment out of. For a majority of movies that I just want to check out, Netflix is more than adequate. There have been times where I'll rent something from Netflix and enjoy it enough to watch it multiple times, in which case I will seek out a physical copy.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I dislike posting glib responses but...

https://thestreetwhereyoulive.files....hoot.jpg?w=620

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Short of a professor creating an MBA case study article on this, I strongly suspect this type of data is generally not available.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I just mean, you'd think someone, somewhere would have written an article to this effect. I'm not asking for graphs or spreadsheets (although that'd be nice!); even just someone with any authority or expertise saying the same. The business of media sales gets no shortage of coverage in specialty press, and since millennials are one of the press' favorite topics of conversation these days...

PhantomStranger claims that DVD and Blu-ray sales are holding steady across every demographic except millennials, in stark contrast to everything I've seen and seemingly everything that everyone else is seeing. I did quite a bit of searching yesterday to find anyone making the same assertion and came up empty. An extraordinary claim like that requires more than what we're being offered.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

To be fair, he said it was industry people that told him that, which is exactly the kind of "blinders-on" sort of assertion I would expect from non-forward-looking people in the industry, the same people who didn't see online music pretty much killing the recording industry. They don't want to say, or even see that everyone's habits are changing, because that would mean a whole restructuring of their industry. Instead, they wanna look at it as more of an isolated trend, so they only have to address one specific market, instead of their entire market and how they operate a whole. The sky is falling, but they don't want to look up for fear of having to do something about it.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I was told consumer interest in physical media is even lower in the generation younger than the Millennials, whatever they are called. The consumer aging curves are a little different between DVD and Blu-ray from what I understand. Hardcore collectors still exist among all age groups, it is not like every person under 30 has never seen a Blu-ray before.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Aren't the people in that generation something like 13-under? Is it any surprise they aren't interested in owning stuff? Not to mention they don't exactly have a disposable income.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Some very good points.

I'd like to know some stats on physical media sold...and from the physical media sold...how many consumers actually redeemed their digital download.

There's got to be somebody who has that info.

Like PhantomStranger. :)

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I was interested in collecting stuff when I was little. I used my allowance money to buy '45s and LP's since I was ten and begged my dad to buy me records (I remember the Monkee albums in particular).

Of course back then that was the only way you could have "on demand" media. I think today's kids don't much value in buying DVDs because they can just stream it for free. They probably just want the latest smartphone or iPad.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Oh, I was interested in buying and collecting stuff when I was that age too. It was mostly video games; I always wanted my mom to buy me games. When I was 12, I think I began buying VHS tapes for myself, although it was mainly just anime. Maybe a year or two before that and for a few years after, I was real big on recording movies I liked off TV. I specifically remember on two different occassions setting my VCR to record late night airings of Friday the 13th pt 8 and Halloween 6 off our local Fox affiliate. I was also boarderline OCD with recording anime off Cartoon Network's Toonami in the late 90s and early 2000s. I remember recording a ton of DBZ, Sailor Moon, Gundam Wing, and Tenchi Muyo, among others. A few of my friends did this as well, I don't think anywhere near the extend I did it, but I always thought we were the exceptions.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I was like this too when I first purchased a vcr. Though after a few years of doing this, I came to the realization that I was hardly watching any of these tapes. Not even stuff like the original Star Trek or TNG.

For stuff I was watching on tv frequently, such as Star Trek reruns, I was mostly watching the actual on-air broadcasts than my vhs copies. Back then and for decades, I though most movies and tv shows were "disposable".

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

I bought my mom a VHS player in 1988 and she said I created a monster. She loved movies, especially oldies and made-for-TV movies and during the next ten years she proceeded to record over 6000 movies on over 2000 tapes. I inherited them in 2000 and made a special floor to ceiling shelf for them to stack them 3 deep (20 to a row, 10 rows high, 4 rows wide and 3 deep). It could hold 2400 tapes and is about 8 feet wide. Now I use it as a DVD shelf (well actually HD DVD and BDs now), but I still keep most of the tapes in the back two rows. Not only for nostalgia and keeping her "creation" alive, but also as a very effective sound barrier since it's against a common wall (I live in a condo). I never, ever hear anything through that wall.

I was ironic though that about 2 months after I inherited them, I started collecting DVDs and only played a few of those tapes (which are pretty bad quality anyway since they were recorded in SLP mode). She loved collecting other stuff too and I think I inherited some of those traits from her.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

They could also be trying to spin things in a positive direction.

Interesting. He should start a thread about that.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

(On a tangent).

My experience was somewhat "paradoxical".

When I was a young adult, I had a lot of money/debt problems. But foolishly I still spent a lot of cash on vinyl records (and later music cds), over this entire particular time period of my life.

By the time I paid off all these debts in the early-2000's, I had no interest anymore in buying music cds (nor dvds for that matter).


I found it somewhat strange that when I was heavily in debt, I was wasting a lot of time and money acquiring tons of "stuff". But when I was completely debt-free, I suddenly had no interest anymore in buying tons of "stuff" (like music cds and dvds).

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Unfortunately we don't live in a world run by "Skeptical Inquirer". :)

With that being said. I strongly suspect such assertions are playing on the (unfortunate) human behavior, that a "lie" that is told repeatedly will eventually be perceived as the "truth". (Independent of what the real actual truth is).

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

LPs have held their sales value fairly well, the market for them is still healthy since they have become a kind of fetish object for younger collectors.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

It's funny how things change. The other day I went to a thrift store and DVDs were priced at $1, CDs were $.50 and vinyl albums were $5.

Not sure how many albums they were actually selling at that price but it is interesting how their perceived value has increased.

re: Blu-ray and DVD sales - #2, but we try harder
 

Hipsters had a thing or two to do with LP's and their resurgence. How ironic.