Best Buy Just Made a Bittersweet Announcement. It’s Truly the End of an Era

Last week, Variety reported that Best Buy would stop selling DVDs following this year’s holiday season. Later, the company confirmed that starting in early 2024, it would remove the DVD section to make room for other products.

It’s actually an interesting lesson about how to adapt as the things your customers care about change over time. There was a time when DVDs were the best and most convenient way to watch movies. That time has long since passed with the onslaught of streaming video services available today.

On the one hand, this is not exactly surprising. As Best Buy’s spokesperson said in a statement, “The way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago.”

That’s true. I’ve acquired a lot of DVDs over my lifetime, but I can’t tell you the last time I actually took one out of the plastic case and put it in a DVD player. I definitely do not remember the last time our family bought one. For that matter, I know we have one or two DVD players around our home, but they haven’t been connected to a TV in at least four years. 

On the one hand, the fact that Best Buy is no longer going to carve out valuable floor space for a product most people don’t want to buy shouldn’t be all that surprising. In a statement, a Best Buy spokesperson told Variety that the change “gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover, and enjoy.”

That part seems pretty obvious. Best Buy stores are big, but they’re still a finite resource. You still only have so much square footage to fill with products you think people will buy. Right now, that’s things like computers and mobile phones and video games (which Best Buy will continue to carry). 

I imagine that even most people who have boxes full of DVDs in their basements aren’t spending a lot of money to grow their collection. Yes, there are plenty of movies that aren’t readily available on streaming services, but in most cases, you can buy digital copies through the iTunes Store, which is–believe it or not–still a thing. 

At the same time, the change is a little bittersweet for an entire generation of people who grew up renting or buying movies on physical media. I’m just old enough to remember VHS tapes. I was in high school when DVDs started becoming popular, and I can remember saving up money to go to the store to buy whatever new favorite movie came out on a disc. 

If you grew up in an age of Netflix and Disney+, the idea that you might go through the effort to visit a physical store to buy your favorite movie on a DVD seems bizarre. But back then, Netflix wasn’t a streaming service where you could watch Stranger Things and the latest Ryan Reynolds movie. No, Netflix was a website where you made a list of movies that you wanted to watch and the company would send you DVDs in the mail. Last month, Netflix discontinued its DVD mailing service for good.

For a lot of people, there is something nostalgic about the experience of buying a DVD. You had to be a lot more picky about how you spent your time and money because a single DVD was more expensive than a month of Netflix. You have to really want a movie or TV show if you were going to go through that kind of effort and spend $20 or $25. 

Of course, as powerful as nostalgia can be, at some point it’s no longer a purchasing motivator. It’s not worth keeping things around that no one wants to buy just because some people will be sad they’re gone. 

I think the goal here is that your job is ultimately to recognize when the thing you’ve sold for decades is no longer worth the shelf space. It’s probably a lot more profitable to get rid of DVDs so you have more room for things people actually buy, like computers and smartphones and printer ink. 

Sure, you can still buy movies on DVD at places like Target and Walmart, but I’d be surprised if that doesn’t change in the next few years. When that happens, it’ll be for just as good a reason, but it’s hard not to see Best Buy’s move as the beginning of the end of an era.