by 
Updated on December 10, 2021
Streaming services continue to gain in popularity with Americans. The home video industry organization Digital Entertainment Group reports that spending on streaming in 2017 clocked in at $9.55 billion, or about 47% of all home video spending. According to Statista, digital distribution now accounts for two-thirds of home video spending, and outpaced movie theater box office grosses for the first time last year.
Here’s an infographic outlining home video spending last year in the United States.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Physical discs are declining, while digital continues to rise
DVD and Blu-Ray sales have continued to dwindle, with streaming alone earning twice as much. While sales still eclipse digital rentals, sales of DVDs dropped 14% last year. Meanwhile, digital video sales and rentals (“electronic sell-through”) actually rose by 5%, the only other growth area for home video besides streaming.
I’ve written before about why digital video sales/rentals have been slow to catch on, but maybe things are slowly starting to change. Since I wrote the post in 2016, the home video industry’s managed to comply with my second recommended point. Movies Anywhere has replaced UltraViolet as the favored cross-platform standard, with Disney and iTunes now on board; that means much less platform lock-in for most digital videos.
Video-on-demand also dropped by 7%, though it’s still is higher than kiosk sales.
The biggest areas of decline are also the lowest-earning ones. Kiosk sales dropped by 16%, pulling in $1.27 billion. While that’s still a sizable figure, Redbox (the dominant vendor in said category) is making new plans to re-enter the streaming space.
DVD/Blu-Ray subscriptions dropped by 18%, earning $450 million; the only major service I know of is Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service, which still exists (If little advertised). Despite that, it’s still higher than the lowest-tallying category, the traditional brick-and-mortar video rental store; earnings at those have dropped by 20%, pulling in only $390 million last year. Without Blockbuster around, there’s very few old-school video rental stores left.
How are you buying/renting videos these days? Do you still buy DVDs/Blu-Rays?
“HBO Now Apple TV” by Harrison Weber is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (Flickr / cropped from original)
