While the physical media business has been in freefall over the last decade, THR is reporting that DVDs and Blu-rays might be making a comeback similar to those experienced by CDs and Vinyl Records. According to the report, while Best Buy and Netflix have both exited the physical media sphere, Amazon and other online giants aren’t planning on giving up on the technology. Many see the resurgence of physical media for music as an early precursor of better times ahead for DVD/Blu-ray.
While unlikely to ever again reach its 2012 peak of $1.1 billion in revenue (in 2022, the figure was a mere $146 million), many see physical media as having a comeback as a more niche media. It helps that with constant content purges, serious fans will want backup copies of their movies because who knows what could get pulled next? There’s a slew of films made for HBO Max and Disney Plus that are essentially lost media now, as well as the mega-budget streaming series Willow. If these shows got physical releases, they would exist in some fashion, with the current unavailability driving fans to pirate sites.
One thing that the music business has done to promote Vinyl and CDs is releasing exclusive tracks that aren’t available to stream, making them collector’s items. We got terrific extras like exclusive commentary tracks in the old days of DVDs and Blu-rays. While fans have cooled on those a bit (and you can also get them digitally), one surefire way to get people to buy Blu-rays is to release alternate cuts of the movie that are ONLY available on disc. In the 2000s, unrated versions of raunchy comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers sold like hotcakes. With so many watered-down movies coming out, why not shoot some spicy footage and ONLY bundle them with the physical copies rather than making them available on sites like iTunes? One thing to note is that when you buy a digital movie copy, you never really own it. I’ve had a few films vanish from my digital library over the years, which never happens with my DVDs or Blu-rays (unless I lend them to the wrong person). Perhaps it’s time we all start buying Blu-rays again, with smaller labels like The Criterion Collection, Arrow, and Shout Factory deserving our support more than ever.