Quote:
Originally Posted by Dylan34
I don't believe blu-ray is dying. Sales are up on a whole like 10% vs last year or something close to that from what I've read. Sony should be out marketing it these days now that almost everyone has an HDTV.
|
Nope. In the U.S., through 9/27, revenue is down 1.89% and unit sales are up just 1.2%. BD has a 30.7% revenue share and a 21% unit share of the physical media market. Which means that 79% of the physical units sold are still DVDs (which itself are in severe decline).
I've said for the last several years that if BD doesn't show better growth, studios would cut back on releases, restorations, bonus features, deluxe packaging, etc. And that's exactly what's happening.
It doesn't mean they're going to stop making BDs. But they are going to focus on areas of growth. Unfortunately, the job of every CEO today in every public company is to increase "shareholder value". They can only do that via growth. If BD can't do that, they'll invest elsewhere.
Unfortunately, we live in an era of so many media choices and distribution methods and there are so many titles being released that few movies today seem "important". Because of that, everything (and this is true for music and books as well) seems disposable. When everything seems disposable, there's no psychological impetus to own it. And those factors, combined with a world of smartphones and pads have caused younger people to not feel the need to own media.
The main thing holding back streaming from becoming even more popular is bandwidth restrictions on portable devices, since the major carriers' monthly data fees in the U.S. have become quite expensive with severe penalties for going over and the fact that most cable companies can't consistently offer enough bandwidth. I almost always have a problem watching a movie on VUDU - it always tests fine and starts off fine, but a half hour into the film it starts having caching problems. I might be paranoid, but I think my ISP is detecting my large data use and throttling the speed.
One of the nice things about 4K is that it's going to make this situation even worse and therefore force consumers to continue to use physical media, which could be the saving grace for BD. Some better movies wouldn't hurt either.
One of the things that's happened in the BD market is similar to what happened in the CD market. From 1984 to 2000, consumers replaced their cassette and vinyl collections with CDs and the growth in the music market was tremendous. But once consumers finished with catalog titles and the music industry had to rely mostly upon sales of new music, the market declined. And once downloading (both legal and illegal) came along, that finished the music market off and if you include inflation, the U.S. music market is now around 30% of its peak.
I think the same thing has happened in the BD market. The collectors have bought all the classics that they want and there aren't enough "must have" new films to provide substantial growth in the market. And VOD, streaming services and downloading are having an effect. And so, we have substantial declines in DVD (down 47% in dollars since 2009) and BD revenues only replacing half of that.
In the music market, there's a revival of vinyl. It's still very niche in spite of the hype - it's only about 4% of the total music market, but its cultural impact is far greater than its sales. (And the sales don't reflect the huge used vinyl market). What I'm hoping is that the rise of vinyl changes the culture back to a collecting culture where physical media dominates which would, in turn, have a positive effect on BD sales.
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Here's another...
Linear Mode
