Strapped4Cash

The B&N's, Fry's and FYE's in my area still have media sections, that might soon be bigger than BB the way things are going there. Though I know that not everyone still has those chains.

Josh-da-man

fixed

Draven

Are you really buying that much at Best Buy? Just sign up for Amazon Prime and get everything cheaper and delivered in two days for free.

I haven't seen a decent Best Buy deal that wasn't matched online in a LONG time. If I don't ever set foot in that store again, fine by me.

Alan Smithee

I like to support actual stores whenever possible because I like to be able to look at stuff which you can't do as well online, plus we'll see how low online pricing continues to stay after they've put all traditional stores out of business. My problem with Best Buy is that they first undercut real media stores on pricing which helped to put many of them out of business, and now they're cutting down on media themselves when they aren't happy with sales.

Josh-da-man

Went into a Best Buy today, and they totally decimated the media section.

They reduced the section by half at least, there's now a big empty space promising a Samsung store where once blu-rays and DVDs lived.

It doesn't look like they reduced their actual stock by much, at least. The shelves were full and there wasn't all of that empty space that has been filling the shelves for the past several months. I would wager that this has been planned for a long time and they haven't been restocking the shelves in anticipation of the shrink.

Pretty shocking to see the CD section, though. It's now a single side of an aisle, and I probably have more CDs in my own personal collection than they have in stock. It's now smaller than the CD sections at either Wal-Mart or Target. Quite shocking to see considering how, then years ago, Best Buy had a huge CD section that took up most of the middle of the store and had a deeper stock than the mall music stores. Now it's like looking at a cardboard stand-up full of remaindered 8-tracks at a gas station.

Draven

I realize these are just observations that I too have noticed, but is it really surprising to anyone these changes have been made? I mean, I'm sure typewriter stores were real popular back in the day but when you don't need them anymore...why would a store continue to carry them?

Alan Smithee

Because typewriters were replaced with something better- CDs and Blu-Rays have not, instead they are trying to replace them with something inferior. (I see Best Buy is still doing exclusives on some stuff though- I remember when they had that exclusive Rolling Stones DVD set, some guy who owned a few small record stores pulled all the Rolling Stones product from his stores in protest, saying "If I'm not good enough to sell this DVD, guess I'm not good enough to sell anything by the Rolling Stones.")

(And actually CDs SHOULD HAVE been replaced by SACDs, but those were killed off by pathetic marketing. Having the capability to play those for a while now, there are only a handful I would actively seek out.)

fumanstan

I don't really blame Best Buy, it's not their fault media isn't selling as much now. Not surprised they would cut back on that section.

DJariya

Fixed. And who could blame them when they can only move product at a major loss.

When guys aren't willing to spend $30 for say Breaking Bad season 5 on release week, then you know the mentality of the store will change.

fumanstan

Not fixed, it was fine before.

DJariya

I know media isn't selling much overall, but I was talking about the mentality of Internet shoppers, especially in this forum.

Nobody here wants to pay $19-22 for a new release BD.

And especially nobody here wants to pay $30-45 on a new release TV show on DVD or BD. and then that stuff ends up sitting on the shelves unsold for months, years until they are forced to give major discounts to move it.

Pizza

Yes and no. The thing with DVDs and CDs is that there are new titles coming out weekly giving folks a reason to walk into their stores and possibly browse. I know I do. Then, maybe they'll come back when they do need that new stove, dishwasher, TV etc that they kept checking out from coming in week from week to pick up those DVDs and CDs.

Josh-da-man

If that's the case, then maybe the studios are pricing DVDs and blu-rays too high.

Merkin_Muffley

My sentiments exactly! I have had two bad customer service experiences recently at the local store. Dealt with two moron managers on each occasion who made no attempt to mediate my attempts to get a price match. When I requested a copy of their price match policy, the arrogant ass advised me to simply "go online" to read it--whereupon I walked out of the store, vowing to never step foot in it again.

I, too, would like to support "brick and mortar" concerns--but I want the personal responsive, courteous customer service that should go with it and differentiate it from a "cyber store."

Alan Smithee

It does certainly seem like people are less and less willing to pay high prices for media, though myself coming from laserdiscs I still have no problem paying less than $30 for something I really want. I've felt that CDs have been overpriced for a LONG time now, looks like prices on some of those are finally dropping but still not quite enough.

But, if people think $20 for a Blu-Ray disc is too much, are they really going to pay that much for access to a "digital" copy of the same movie on CinemaNow instead?

big e

I think a big problem is that the studios are still pricing Blu-ray like its a premium product when it is no longer one. The standard MSRP is, what, $29.99-$39.99? No one expects to pay that much for a movie at this point in time. I don't want to pay that much unless its something Criterion or a specialty distributor put out. The studios should drop the MSRP to, say, $19.99-$24.99. That way, when Best Buy or fye charges full price for a title, they aren't charging a crazy amount of money for it. (Although, I still think $24.99 is too high, but you couldn't drop Blu-ray's MSRP down too low without dropping DVD real low)

DJariya

I think that's one of the reasons why Tower and Virgin Megastore went out of business. Very few sales and most of the inventory was being sold at MSRP.

It's pretty safe to say that most people are pretty frugal with their money nowadays and aren't interested in paying top dollar for entertainment.

bunkaroo

Yeah, with $1 Red Box and $5-6 DTV HD PPV on new movies, they need to get those new releases back around $15 regularly like they were with DVD. Blu-ray's been out 7 years now. At that time in DVD's life cycle we were getting better release day deals IIRC.

Draven

While you could easily argue picture/audio quality as being worse, in my opinion the convenience of digital downloads (especially of music) easily outweighs that difference in quality.

Alan Smithee

I just don't get the "convenience" factor of music downloads- I had some free credit for MP3s on Amazon so I got a few production library tracks that I couldn't find on CD, now I don't even know where the hell they are on my computer! I'll admit stuff like Spotify is pretty convenient, but I'll still go buy the CD if it's something I like- if anything, Spotify is a suitable replacement for radio given that most stations won't play anything I like anymore.

Hokeyboy

This is 2013. If you can't easily find files on your computer, maybe music downloads aren't the problem.

fumanstan

Looks like Best Buy actually made money.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/20/46...ected-earnings