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Sales and rental of DVD and Blu-ray discs have fallen 9% in the first 9 month of 2010, compared to the same period last year. The fall was largely due to new releases not performing as well. New releases account for 25% of the market, but sales were down 15% this year, despite titles like Avatar and Toy Story 3.
While the poor global economic outlook can be to blame (although many would argue 2009 wasn't much better in this regard), and the industry will always blame piracy, but the real reason for the slump may in fact be due to digital downloads and streaming, but of the legal kind.
Services such as Netflix, LoveFilm, and catch-up services from local TV channels, may be eating into DVD and Blu-ray profits as consumers choose more flexible viewing options that often come with a lower price tag, or even free in some cases.
But Blu-ray may offer some hope, with sales up and revenue finally starting to offset some of the losses of DVD. But as our own Blu-ray stats analysis shows, there's still a long way to go until Blu-ray's revenue gains can completely offset DVD's losses, if it is even possible.
While the industry is unsure what to do next, the director of BBC Worldwide's Home Entertainment division Paul Dempsey sees digital growing and on-demand being the key. Via micro-payments, he envisages a future where revenue comes from "long-tail" downloads as users access the BBC's vast archives of past shows and programming.
('long tail' is a statistical term, but in the context here, it means each unique download, for example episode 5 of Star Trek: TOS, is only downloaded a small number of times, but the sheer number of unique downloads means a huge number of total downloads. The opposite would be a few selected downloads, like the latest episodes of a hit show or the latest movie releases, each being downloaded in large quantities and having to always rely on popular new releases to satisfy revenue needs)
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While the poor global economic outlook can be to blame (although many would argue 2009 wasn't much better in this regard), and the industry will always blame piracy, but the real reason for the slump may in fact be due to digital downloads and streaming, but of the legal kind.
Services such as Netflix, LoveFilm, and catch-up services from local TV channels, may be eating into DVD and Blu-ray profits as consumers choose more flexible viewing options that often come with a lower price tag, or even free in some cases.
But Blu-ray may offer some hope, with sales up and revenue finally starting to offset some of the losses of DVD. But as our own Blu-ray stats analysis shows, there's still a long way to go until Blu-ray's revenue gains can completely offset DVD's losses, if it is even possible.
While the industry is unsure what to do next, the director of BBC Worldwide's Home Entertainment division Paul Dempsey sees digital growing and on-demand being the key. Via micro-payments, he envisages a future where revenue comes from "long-tail" downloads as users access the BBC's vast archives of past shows and programming.
('long tail' is a statistical term, but in the context here, it means each unique download, for example episode 5 of Star Trek: TOS, is only downloaded a small number of times, but the sheer number of unique downloads means a huge number of total downloads. The opposite would be a few selected downloads, like the latest episodes of a hit show or the latest movie releases, each being downloaded in large quantities and having to always rely on popular new releases to satisfy revenue needs)
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