An entertainment industry group says that Americans are spending slightly less on watching moving pictures in our living rooms overall, but part of that is a change in how we buy and consume media, and not necessarily that we’re watching fewer movies and TV programs. In news that will surprise no one, spending on DVDs and DVD rentals has declined significantly, and spending on downloads, streaming service subscriptions, and digital rentals has increased.
This information comes from the Digital Entertainment Group, a consortium of content providers that started back in the ’90s as the “DVD Entertainment Group” to promote DVDs to the movie-watching public. They’ve since re-branded, and with good reason. Americans have been spending more on digital media and less on plastic movie disks over the years, and the amounts are getting closer together.
That’s in relative terms, of course: total digital spending and DVD spending are now within $20 million of each other. That’s objectively a lot of money, but not much compared to the totals. In the last quarter of 2014, spending on downloads, streaming services, and other digital media systems was up 16%, and reached $2.12 billion. Spending on DVD purchases was down a symmetrical 16%, falling to $2.34 billion. DVD rentals were down 8.5%, and the total was $833 million.
U.S. DVD Sales Continue to Slide as Digital Viewing Soars [Bloomberg]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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