Is Physical Media Dead? | Retail Archaeology

In this episode of Retail Archaeology we take a look at the state of physical media at Target and Walmart and the demise of Redbox.

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#target #walmart #dvd

[Larry]

Makes you wonder if physical media isn't actually in decline, but companies want it gone, so people will have to perpetually rent them forever through streaming.

[yoshifan]

We need physical media to stay alive. Streaming services can take anything down at any time for any reason, so physical media is the only way to make sure we can always have access to our favorite movies, music, video games, etc.

[CoolCatProductions-]

As a 17 year old, I’m not giving up on physical media yet. I’m still collecting dvds, blue-rays, and hopefully soon some CDs or cassette tapes. I also go to my local library to get dvds as they still have large selection. Using physical media is just better than streaming services or online.

[Muertenoir]

I am glad I have a DVD collection and a small VHS collection. Some movies just aren’t on streaming at all.

[dravenlee]

It's dead to the mainstream crowd but thriving with the collector's market. I feel like this this is the golden age. Tons of 4K releases and boutique labels putting out great stuff. There just isn't much of a purpose in putting out anything other than new releases in stores. If you want an older title, it's best and more efficient to them to be sitting in a warehouse to be shipped when sold.

[drno-xcyt]

Maybe I'm an outlier, but the big box stores are rapidly offering no reason whatsoever to ever set foot in the store. I can remember the early 2000's when I could walk into Best Buy and find every new anime release, just about every recent PS2 release, and even a number of big box PC games sitting on the shelf. Even Target had a robust DVD/game selection.

I'll stick with physical media until the end. When you buy content digitally, you never truly own it - you're at the mercy of the content provider. One of my policies is that I will not pay full price for digital games - if you want me to use my storage and my network bandwidth to buy a $50 game that I may lose access to at some time in the future, then sell me the game for $25.

[Cherubicpants]

I was at a Walmart in Idaho of all places, and was shocked to see a decent selection of Physical PC games.

[Terminal_Apotos]

I’ll never stop buying physical, I like to actually own my games and movies

[Wyrdwad]

I've commented on this before, and always feel a bit awkward doing so because it probably sounds like I'm being smug or something, but I actually just find it fascinating more than anything. I'm an American in my 40s, and grew up in suburbia with BlockBuster, Walmart, Target, Redbox, numerous go-to shopping malls and big-box stores, etc., but for the last 5 years of my life, I've been living in Japan. And the contrast is... stark.

When I've commented before, it's been about malls, because... yeah, dead malls aren't much of a thing here, as shopping malls are very much alive and well across the country, and especially in the cities (any cities, not just Tokyo and such!), are absolutely thriving and always packed. This time, the contrast you've made me acutely aware of, though, is in regards to physical media... because yeah, again, physical media is still very much thriving here. Not so much in the Japanese equivalents to Walmart and Target (though you will find a serviceably sized physical media section in Don Quijote here, at least, which is one of the major department store chains), but... rather, in their own dedicated shops, or in the Japanese equivalents to Best Buy (most notably Yodobashi and Bic Camera, both of which still always have HUGE physical media sections on offer!).

Those aforementioned dedicated shops, though, consist of a lot of familiar names, such as Tower Records and HMV for music and some movies (both of which are still found all over the country here), as well as a record shop called Disk Union that's been popping up a lot here lately. But then there are also the used shops like Book-Off and Hard-Off (yes, it's actually called that!), which tend to have massive multi-aisle well-stocked selections of music, movies, and games available, as well as... video rental stores! Those are still a thing here. Tsutaya would be the Japanese equivalent to BlockBuster, and they're still all over the place... but remarkably, there's even a competitor to them (I guess you can think of it like the Japanese equivalent to Hollywood Video?) called Geo that's still super common as well. And both Tsutaya and Geo feel very well-stocked with not just movies for rent on DVD or blu-ray (or even VHS, sometimes!), but also music CDs for rent -- illegal in the U.S., but 100% legal here (whereas on the flipside, game rentals are illegal in Japan; it's very strange!).

Tsutaya and Geo also often have "rental-ochi" sections, which roughly translates to something like "rental fall-off." Essentially, when a DVD or blu-ray (or VHS tape, or CD) becomes unpopular and stops getting rented for long enough, the store will just straight-up sell it at a huge discount, rental case and all.

Retail culture in Japan is seriously booming, to an extent that I don't think I've ever seen it boom in the U.S. in my entire lifetime. Even when I was a kid mallratting with my friends in suburban Pennsylvania, I don't think I've ever seen malls as crowded as I often do now, on weekdays, in 2024.

I'd love to see you visit Japan sometime and document some of this retail culture for yourself, as it's genuinely heartening and honestly quite nostalgic. I think you'd be floored by what you'd encounter here. Like me, you may never want to leave. ;)

[christopherhindle]

Unless you own physical media, you own nothing.

[IVR]

I feel like the "death" of physical media is somewhat accelerated by companies. I mean, I see plenty of people online, and meet plenty in the real world, who still buy physical copies of games, movies and albums, all while companies insist that physical media is dead. I guess what I'm trying to say is that companies are trying to push digital media onto the public by removing it from shelves, when I imagine people would still be buying it if they had the option. Or maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, this is just me hypothesizing.
But it's definitely strange to walk into stores that used to have full selections of physical media like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, and even the occasional surviving FYE, and see it replaced with a single shelf of poorly organized LPs. It always kinda bums me out.

[niico]

People still seem to prefer physical books over ebooks.

[prior]

Walmart was in talks with SDS (Studio distribution services) about taking them over and helping manage their physical media business., the largest distributor of DVD, Bluray and 4k UHD discs nationally. I started collecting movies on physical media again a year ago out of nostalgia and frustration over subscription services. I'm currently close to 2000 titles now which I now own forever. As a huge movie fan and growing up around a video rental store, I find that this is in a way protecting the integrity and vision of directors. Along with the artform of filmmaking.

[BPicturesProduction]

As someone who's been lucky enough to work with many of the boutique labels (Criterion, Arrow Video, Shout Factory, etc), all I can say is "nope". From a brick and mortar standpoint? It can certainly look that way (thanks Best Buy). But titles still sell quite well online. So basically digital sales of physical titles... a foot in each door, basically.

[jackphillips]

Walmart caters to a lot more rural areas, where internet is not as good currently, requiring physical media. In fact, until the demise of Redbox last week, Redbox was pretty busy at our local Walmart.

[jadenova]

"Their society progressed to a certain point and then it just completely vanished, " A Future Archeologist on our society.

[RoachOverlord]

I find it pretty wild that vinyl is the most popular form of physical media right now. A format that was basically considered obsolete 20 years ago.

[mastermindmartialarts]

I am a huge fan of physical media. My friends make fun of me for it, but I prefer ownership to convenience. So I'll continue to purchase it until it is no longer available.

[TominoCabana]

I am big on physical media just because of how many things have been pulled from streaming and digital stores, a physical copy is like a permanent record of a movie, game, or album existing.

[JynxGP]

Man I miss the days of being a kid (about 12-15 years ago at this point) and going down the video game aisle of Walmart/Target and getting to pick out a DS game from those large glass cases. Back when the entire aisle on both sides was all lined with just video game cases. I always dreamed of getting older and being able to go down those aisles with my own money, but now that I have my own money those days are long gone.