Steamd

As reported by Ars Technica, DVD sales are in a bit of a slump. Yes, part of the blame is due to the availability of movies via video-on-demand, pay-per-view, Netflix and other rental places. All of these are just byproducts to the primary reason why DVD sales have gone down a bit, that DVDs are just too expensive and people just aren’t buying as many as they used to.

The average DVD movie costs anywhere from $19.99 to $39.99 and up. Retailers push to get people to buy movies when they first come out by pricing them as low as $14.99 for a newly released movie. Even at that price, people just aren’t flocking out to buy them. Is it the quality of the movies coming out that keeps people from buying them? Or is it that people just don’t want to spend a whole lot of money on movies anymore?

And, of course, it doesn’t help that there are two other competing formats, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, vying for people’s attention but doing nothing more than cause further confusion to the average consumer. Plus, the fact that these formats cost anywhere from $10 to $15 dollars more compared to the DVD keeps people from buying them as well.

I’ve bought only three movies in the past three months: Spider-man 3, Ratatouille, and Transformers. All three together cost me around $65. That’s pretty much the most I can afford with my current financial status. Add to that the amount I’ve spend on comic books, CDs, iTunes downloads, and a bunch of other media related stuff and you have a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff.

For the most part, the average buyer is just like me; I only want to spend a limited amount for the media that I buy. Studios are doing a heck of a job trying to cram this stuff down our throats. But what they aren’t doing is lowering the prices for all this stuff. Heck, if I could buy most movies for $10 to $12 dollars on DVD I’d probably buy more often. But as it stands, no, I can’t buy everything that I’d like. So, until the price goes down, I’ll stick with the few movies that I get on sale. For everything else, there’s Netflix!

Update (December 5, 2007):

Whether it’s music, audio books, e-books, movies, TV shows, or the like, media is media any way you slice it. Piracy is just a fact of life and something every media company must face. Punishing the consumer for a few bad eggs though is not good. Continuing to tell consumer what they can and cannot do with the media they buy is simply a bad business decision. Consumers want choices and the studios aren’t budging. So what I recommend is this:

1. Lower the price of DVDs - People will buy more if the cost is right. If the average price was around $10 then DVDs would fly off the shelves. And if you really want HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray to be succesful, why not price the media for around the same price DVDs are now?
2. Go DRM-less - As it stands, consumers have to break DMCA laws just to convert their DVDs into something playable on a media player. Removing the encryption and DRM from all media (including downloadable content) would give consumers a lot more choices as to when and where they can play the media they purchase.
3. Offer downloadable, burnable content - DVD is but one method of content delivery. Give consumers the freedom to choose how they buy their media. If they want to buy it as a downloadable copy via iTunes or another media store then offer it. Also, the sale of downloadable, burnable DVDs would be a very good thing. I’d be willing to buy a downloadable DVD for about $10 just for the sheer convenience of not having to go to the store.