[Nailwraps]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

Around, yes. But there will be far fewer titles, far fewer restorations and far less special packaging. Obviously, the big hit movies, especially the popcorn films will still be released on disc, but smaller films and unreleased back catalog may not be.

Discs are a very hit driven business. In the U.S. in 2016, the top Blu-ray 100 titles constituted 70% of industry Blu-ray revenue and 57% of the units. In a typical week, the 20th best-selling title sells just 3% of the top selling title and only the top 20 titles sell more on Blu-ray than on DVD.

The physical disc business is also in decline overall. In 2009, in the U.S., it was almost $11 billion at retail (Blu-ray + DVD combined). By 2016, it was half that at $5.469 billion. 2017 will come in under $5 billion.

One thing driving the studios to still release physical is that the licensing fees they get back from third party streaming services aren't very high. But in the case of Disney/Fox, they're planning their own streaming services so they get to keep all the revenue (aside from backend participations) so they will have even more of an incentive to push streaming over physical.

On the other hand, if the abandonment of net neutrality isn't reversed, streaming services might get far more expensive as the ISPs attempt to blackmail the services or they'll slow them down.

We also have a younger generation which largely doesn't care about owning physical media or about the extra quality it provides. Streaming is the future whether us old fogies like it or not, although maybe that will change a bit as the younger generation settles down, buys homes, etc. In the music industry, physical media (in the U.S.) is now only 16.3% of the business in revenue. Downloads constitute 19.6% and streaming dominates with 64.1% of the dollars.

Valid opinion. But:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/11/...-are-thriving/