This holiday season was another last hurrah. One of the last bastions, Best Buy has been a stalwart brick-and-mortar retailer of audio/video gear and movies. But with the new year, its inventory of silvery discs will disappear. Starting in 2024, Best Buy will no longer sell DVD or Blu-ray discs in-store, or online.
Apparently, getting out of the disc business is a financially prudent thing to do. The once ubiquitous racks of discs are fast disappearing from the electronics departments of both big-box and small-box stores. Yes, some grocery stores have tubs 'o movies, but that's just sad. The reality is that the retail movie floor space is giving way to something presumably far more profitable, like iPhone cases or screen protectors, or something. Also very sad.
Much like a zombie apocalypse, sawed-off Remington in hand, we can fight bravely, but the final chapter seems like it's only a matter of time. The onslaught directed at us, of course, is a veritable torrent of ones and zeroes, as unstoppable as a mother's love and as inevitable as death and taxes. Bit by bit, word by word, physical media is being relentlessly replaced by streaming.
Once upon a time, if you lived in an urban area, you might have shopped at a Virgin Records store. Or, even better, maybe you wandered over to your local mom-and-pop record shop. Flipping through bins, music and movies, treasure-hunting, finding that special disc, the thrill of discovery.
This story is from the February - March 2024 edition of Sound & Vision.
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This story is from the February - March 2024 edition of Sound & Vision.
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