Target selling physical media in-store and online in doubt. (3 Viewers)

[Alex...]

If this is true we should officially here about this soon.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I buy most of my discs from Target. If this is true, then my days of buying physical media is coming to an end or significantly reduced.

 

[Worth]

I buy most of my discs from Target. If this is true, then my days of buying physical media is coming to an end.

You're just going to stick with digital?

 

[Robert Crawford]

You're just going to stick with digital?

Let's just say the number of physical media I purchased each month will be significantly reduced.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I posted this picture in the thread about Best Buy ceasing sales of physical media in stores just yesterday.

I took it a few days ago. This was the entire inventory of movie discs in my local Target that day:

 

[Desslar]

I mostly buy from Amazon, but if Target gets out of the game then I guess we can kiss good discounts goodbye.

Guess 2024 is the year to complete one's collection. Better check my credit limit.

 

[Malcolm R]

I posted this picture in the thread about Best Buy ceasing sales of physical media in stores just yesterday.

I took it a few days ago. This was the entire inventory of movie discs in my local Target that day:

This is pretty much the same as the stores near me. They also have one endcap with a handful of new releases. I was in one of these yesterday and pretty much scanned the entire selection in about 30 seconds.

 

[jayembee]

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Sadly, there really isn’t a mass consumer market for this product anymore, which means that it’s not economical for stores that exclusively market mass consumer products to carry.

It’s a difficult product for stores to carry, with the minor exception of a new release major title being stocked specifically for release week. If you go to Target needing laundry detergent and they don’t have the exact brand or bottle size that you’re used to buying, you can grab another nearly identical option and leave satisfied. The end result is the same, your laundry comes out clean and Target gets a sale. Movies are different. If you go out looking for Frozen and they only have Jurassic World, they’re not swappable. You leave empty handed and Target has lost money putting an item on a shelf that isn’t selling. Most people who watch movies at home aren’t buying discs anymore, so it’s a very small part of the total movie watching audience that’s buying them to begin with. The majority of the disc buying audience is no longer willing to shop for discs in brick and mortar stores because it’s not worth their time to take a chance that a local store may or may not have a deep catalog title. And for stores, it’s not worth carrying thousands of different titles to be able to be prepared to handle the one customer that might be looking for that one specific title. That business model just doesn’t really work anymore with where the business is today.

Target effectively left the music business years ago, switching to a consignment model where they were willing to let record labels ship them product for free, split whatever revenue came in with them, and then required the labels to be responsible for removing unsold product. Target wasn’t willing to put any money up front towards keeping music on their shelves.

I said this nearly a year ago when the Best Buy news broke. This is ultimately a necessary correction in order to right size physical media for the smaller but loyal enthusiast market that remains. It is hugely damaging to physical media’s prospects to have to create enough copies to stock stores like Target and Best Buy, when most of that stock winds up not being sold. The cost of maintaining that infrastructure that is too large for the revenue the business generates is toxic to physical media’s survival. Right sizing the business, reducing the number of copies made to something much closer to the number of copies that actually sell, and reducing the number of places that sell them so that the number of storefronts better matches the number of customers, is key to physical media’s survival as a niche business.

 

[Malcolm R]

Interesting to see what they put in to replace media. In some bigger Target stores, the media section was huge (at one time).

 

[Robert Crawford]

Sadly, there really isn’t a mass consumer market for this product anymore, which means that it’s not economical for stores that exclusively market mass consumer products to carry.

It’s a difficult product for stores to carry, with the minor exception of a new release major title being stocked specifically for release week. If you go to Target needing laundry detergent and they don’t have the exact brand or bottle size that you’re used to buying, you can grab another nearly identical option and leave satisfied. The end result is the same, your laundry comes out clean and Target gets a sale. Movies are different. If you go out looking for Frozen and they only have Jurassic World, they’re not swappable. You leave empty handed and Target has lost money putting an item on a shelf that isn’t selling. Most people who watch movies at home aren’t buying discs anymore, so it’s a very small part of the total movie watching audience that’s buying them to begin with. The majority of the disc buying audience is no longer willing to shop for discs in brick and mortar stores because it’s not worth their time to take a chance that a local store may or may not have a deep catalog title. And for stores, it’s not worth carrying thousands of different titles to be able to be prepared to handle the one customer that might be looking for that one specific title. That business model just doesn’t really work anymore with where the business is today.

Target effectively left the music business years ago, switching to a consignment model where they were willing to let record labels ship them product for free, split whatever revenue came in with them, and then required the labels to be responsible for removing unsold product. Target wasn’t willing to put any money up front towards keeping music on their shelves.

I said this nearly a year ago when the Best Buy news broke. This is ultimately a necessary correction in order to right size physical media for the smaller but loyal enthusiast market that remains. It is hugely damaging to physical media’s prospects to have to create enough copies to stock stores like Target and Best Buy, when most of that stock winds up not being sold. The cost of maintaining that infrastructure that is too large for the revenue the business generates is toxic to physical media’s survival. Right sizing the business, reducing the number of copies made to something much closer to the number of copies that actually sell, and reducing the number of places that sell them so that the number of storefronts better matches the number of customers, is key to physical media’s survival as a niche business.

Yes, we know what time it is!

 

[Garysb]

It surprises me that Best Buy and now apparently Target give up on online sales when they discontinue in store sales. I understand that due to increase online shopping smaller physical stores are now more desirable and in store media doesn't provide enough profit for the space it takes up but why discontinue online where this isn't a factor. How long would discs last at Walmart once they are the last national chain to sell discs ?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Yes, we know what time it is!

I know you do and I know a lot of our readership does but this still comes as a surprise to many people who don’t want it to be true, which I understand also.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It surprises me that Best Buy and now apparently Target give up on online sales when they discontinue in store sales. I understand that due to increase online shopping smaller physical stores are now more desirable and in store media doesn't provide enough profit for the space it takes up but why discontinue online where this isn't a factor. How long would discs last at Walmart once they are the last national chain to sell discs ?

I think the online infrastructure is much harder to maintain than we realize, especially with the rise in shipping costs that came in with the pandemic and never went down, and the rising cost of real estate which also isn’t going down.

Walmart probably stands a better chance as the sole big box player in this arena, it’ll consolidate the remaining buyers into fewer areas and that should help.

But as to how long in general… I keep thinking back to when Warner and Universal combined their home video departments into the joint venture SDS. Because they needed government permission to do so, they had to make some publicly available filings and the one thing that stood out to me in that was that they said they believed if they consolidated efforts, there could be enough of a market remaining for physical media to remain viable for ten more years. That was back in 2019, so if their prediction holds, it’s closer to the end than not. I think there was a recent headline that for the first time since the dawn of DVD, physical media sales had dipped below $1 billion a year, down from around $25 billion a year at its height.

$1 billion in revenue is still a business that can be maintained but I think it’s just all about reconfiguring the entire infrastructure of the business to work within those expectations, which is still set up to expect peak sales to thrive.

 

[Clinton McClure]

My local Target has basically abandoned physical film media. I was in yesterday looking for a new Cuisinart electric can opener (which they no longer carry in-store) and took a stroll back to electronics. They’ve used part of the previous movie section to double their vinyl albums (I personally know exactly one person who buys vinyl) and use the rest to quadruple their assortment of Funko Pops. Their entire physical media section was a mostly empty end cap containing three MCU titles, all on Blu-ray.

 

[EricSchulz]

Living in Chicago we have three Targets: regular, City Target and Super Target. I don’t think the City Targets carry and media other than a few hot video games and books. The regular Targets have fairly good video game and book sections but CDs, DVDs and vinyl have been severely limited (see my pic of a regular Target DVD/BD section I took today). The Super Targets are not in my area but I check them out when I’m near one.
I’m curious about the online store. I seem to think at one point third party sellers offered product but checking out the website doesn’t show anything any more.

 

[Desslar]

I know you do and I know a lot of our readership does but this still comes as a surprise to many people who don’t want it to be true, which I understand also.

The DVD and bluray communities on Reddit are strangely resistant to this truth. If anyone dares suggests that the health of the physical media market may be in decline, they will be downvoted into oblivion amidst a chorus echoing "But look at all the boutique label releases!"

 

[SD_Brian]

If physical media doesn't have the words "Taylor Swift" on the cover, my local Target doesn't seem to carry it, so this really won't be much of a change.

 

[Robert Crawford]

If physical media doesn't have the words "Taylor Swift" on the cover, my local Target doesn't seem to carry it, so this really won't be much of a change.

It’s a major change because 99% of my Target physical media purchases are online. I think most people purchase their physical media online today.

 

[BobO'Link]

It’s a major change because 99% of my Target physical media purchases are online. I think most people purchase their physical media online today.

Outside of Big Lots, which is happenstance close out stuff, 100% of my physical media purchases, CD/DVD/BR, are online and have been for 5+ years.