Alan Smithee

This has been on my mind for a long time, and it's something that I probably should already know the answer to having worked for Tower Records their last five years in business, but that was one thing I never learned there. I know we have a few "insiders" here so maybe they can shed some light on this:

Basically, because there have been some "doom and gloom" reports about media in general not selling well these days, and because I always like to show my support for it, when I buy a disc I'm not just doing so in order to have that disc in my collection, but to also cast a "vote" with my dollars for it. My question is- does that actually do any good? When I buy a disc anywhere, whether it be Target, an independent record store, Best Buy or whatever, is somebody somewhere taking that as "Hey, someone just bought this title on Blu-Ray- that means we made a good decision putting that title out, and should continue to issue titles like that." On the other hand, if I leave a desired title on the shelf for either lack of money, shelf space or the time to watch it, is that telling somebody "We made a mistake putting that out- nobody's buying it, so we'll discontinue it soon and make sure not to put out any more titles like that again. In fact, let's just drop hi-def media altogether- nobody can tell the difference between that and regular DVD or VHS, and movie sales are falling anyways." On the store level, especially with stores that don't specialize in media or are threatening to cut back on it (like Best Buy), my hope with each purchase is that it tells them that media is a thing worth continuing to carry. Of course one thing I've always hoped to accomplish by leaving something on the shelf is to "tell" those behind it that they did something wrong with it- most obvious example being when some movies were issued on DVD in pan and scan format. Some people went ahead and bought them anyways because they liked the movie and weren't bothered by it, but I didn't buy those titles because I wanted to send the message of that being unacceptable. (Some were afraid however that doing that would simply be saying that nobody wanted that particular movie at all.)

The same thing applies to music- I know music sales have been in the toilet for a long time, and so every time I buy a CD I hope that doing so shows support for that format and music retailers in general.

So, to those in the know: have I really been voting with my dollars, or not really making much difference? If I really want to help the industry, what SHOULD I be doing?

JackBurton

I too have wondered about this. Hoping someone in the know chimes in.

BuckNaked2k

This would have been better posted to the sales thread.

EddieMoney

PhantomStranger

I've heard counting home video sales at the retail level is more about the royalties tied up in Hollywood's contracts with its talent. The studios themselves care much more about wholesale sales, which is only indirectly tied to retail sales. That is the purpose of cut-outs and barcode slashes, the studios still get paid on some level but it won't count as a unit of sale for a director's or actor's royalty fee.

The music industry of course has the Soundscan system for CDs.

Alan Smithee

So my purchasing a disc isn't going to necessarily "help" anything?

g

Warner and Shout Factory on their HTF chats always talked about the sales dictating what titles come out. So if everyone thinks that way then it would make a poor difference.

JackBurton

FWIW, as far as Shout/Scream Factory are concerned, Cliff MacMillan recently posted this on another forum:

milo bloom

Retail has to count for something. In the past couple of years, with the problems with a few Godzilla movies (Destroy All Monsters and Megalon) I've noticed places like FYE and even Best Buy stocking more giant monster movies. The stores notice the sales numbers and if a chain is ordering large numbers of certain titles then the studios will definitely notice.

bruceames

Studios/distributors are obviously going to know how well their product is selling. Perhaps not always direct point-of-sale data, but it's easy to count actual sales to consumers by subtracting the number of unsold/returned units from the number of units shipped. So your "vote" will always count.

For us, it's not hard to see which titles are selling, and which are selling worse than expected. A movie that drops fast in price is probably underperforming. Movies that you can't find in stores but only online don't sell enough in volume to warrent shelf space, etc.

As for weekly sales data, the Nielsen Videoscan First Alert top 20 (from HMM) is actual point of sale data. It's probably a sample size, and we are only given the ratios and not units sold. For overall revenue, that is estimated from various sources, of which I'm not too clear.

JimRochester

1, 2, 3, another, another, another

manicsounds

Sales numbers are not the number of titles bought by consumers, but the number of titles that the stores buy from the supplier. So whatever is on the shelves in stores equate to the sales figures.

If a Best Buy store stocks 100 copies of a certain title, that means "100 copies in sales".
If only 3 people buy that specific title and 97 remain, it still means "100 copies in sales".

If retailers end up sending back those unsold titles, they won't adjust the sales figures, but they will take into consideration what titles are being returned, and it will affect future title considerations.

bruceames

Sales figures from the DEG and HMM are in revenue, not units. Units shipped info on optical discs is rarely provided, if ever. That is private info and besides not really relevant as people want to know how much consumers spent.




The Nielsen Top 20 does count units on individual titles, and those are point-of-sale transactions. However the public only sees the ratios of units sold.

Alan Smithee

Wow- I assume those "Blu-Ray Shares" are percentages of sales which were Blu-Ray rather than standard DVD, and if so that's pretty sad. I don't know why anyone would buy a standard DVD in this day and age unless a Blu-Ray WASN'T available, and I would have expected to see stores cutting back on standard DVDs as a result if they're going to cut back on anything at all. Guess I also have to keep supporting the superior format in mind when I buy stuff too, much as I did with laserdisc when VHS was the dominant format. (I keep hearing that the LD proportions were REALLY pathetic- it had something like 2% of the market! I still say most of that can be blamed on ridiculous overpricing of some titles and the pathetic support of the format from most retailers. Even when Circuit City started carrying media, they had VHS movies but NO laserdiscs, and being and electronics retailer it would have been in their best interest to carry the better format.)

bruceames

Well at this point in time, seven full years after launch, with DVD still owning 70 percent of the optical video market, Blu-ray appears destined to be a supplemental format to DVD, rather than one intended to replace it. Its year by year gains in marketshare are very slow but also very consistent, about 5% in marketshare a year. Gains are so slow that digital will likely overtake DVD before Blu-ray ever does.

I think the main reason for this sluggish growth is the combination of Blu-ray players being backwards compatible and upscaled DVD being good enough for most people. There's no real motivation to upgrade.

rw2516

This. I remember albums receiving gold and platunum status before they were released on retailers pre-orders.