Home Video sales other than USA

[Musicguy]

Are home video sales down across the globe or just in the USA? Do countries like France and Germany prefer streaming? Or is it just in the USA that the public has stopped buying hard media?

[malcy30]

Sales must be okay in Germany and Australia as they get a lot more back catalogue releases than other European countries. However it may be linked to the price studios can get for their BDs.

This is what really hurts back catalogue BD releases in the UK, customers here will not pay a fair price for BDs wanting them for peanuts, hence the big studios not wanting to release back catalogue here.

This is why UK independents like Arrow, BFI and Eureka are increasing moving to a premium limited edition release model, to force people to pay full price or risk missing out if a title sells out. Arrow at least then do general release versions with less extras and missing booklets etc at a cheaper price, as the limited edition revenue allows them to cover most, if not all the production costs of a title.

[bruceames]

Disc sales are down everywhere, roughly by the same percentage rate. Streaming is only a part of the reason. These days there is so much competition for your free time, with smartphones, social media, streaming, etc. that there is much less dependence on watching a disc to kill the evening time than before.

Also streaming via Netflix doesn't really compete much with disc because it's all catalog and most revenue from disc comes from new releases (which Netflix doesn't have).