Well, get your DVD and Blu-rays while you can. It seems as if the one-stop shop for all things electronics has decided that it will not be selling physical media anymore. Best Buy, the store where you used to wander up and down the DVD aisles for hours before realizing you have too many DVDs in your arms already, is prepared to stop selling physical copies of movies and TV shows in 2024.
“To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago,” a Best Buy spokesperson said in a statement to Variety. “Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy.”
That means it is going to get infinitely harder to buy physical media now. Best Buy will still sell TV shows and movies through the holidays this year, but come 2024 you will no longer see a section of your local Best Buy dedicated to physical media. What they’ll put there, I don’t know because I really only ever went into the DVD section of my Best Buy so guess I won’t be going there again anytime soon.
Where will we go for physical media now, though? Yes, there are DVDs and Blu-rays in stores like Barnes & Noble, but Best Buy was the main option for many of us. Is this truly the beginning of the end of physical media or is this an opportunity for a new kind of store to emerge for those of us who do collect our favorite movies in a non-digital format? Maybe something from days gone by, this time with the option to buy?
Quick, someone bring back Blockbuster
Look, I’m not saying we need to have movie rental stores again. More specifically, I think there’s an opportunity to open a store like Blockbuster that sells DVDs and Blu-rays and is definitely just for physical media. Think about the relatively recent boom in vinyl. I am a collector of vinyl records. I have my favorites and I listen to them regularly. You can now find vinyl stores almost everywhere, or find your favorite album just by searching for it online.
What if we got to that level with physical media? I know that movies are easily streaming but so is music. (We’ve also recently seen streaming platforms and studios remove movies and shows from streaming entirely for the purposes of a quick tax write-off.) The fact that we’re okay with movies just going to the wayside when we are this precious about music really doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t we have the same affection for movies and television shows that we do with vinyl records? My proposal in response to Best Buy’s decision to stop selling physical media is to simply open a store in every town where you can go and buy the latest season of Grey’s Anatomy on DVD. We’d all come and get a copy, so why not?
(featured image: NBC)
Published: Oct 19, 2023 05:00 am