DVD & Blu-ray Sales Drop 18.3% This Year

DVD sales have been sliding for quite a while, but figures from the first half of this year show a change from "slide" to "steep drop." Sales of DVDs and Blu-ray were off 18.3%. However, Blu-ray alone gained 10% over that period of time, meaning an even more catastrophic drop for DVDs. And, for the first time, the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) reports that unit sales of digital forms of video outsold physical units.
Digital Music News points out
<http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/080711dvds> the eerie parallels between these video figures and what happened in the music industry. The scariest finding is that, like what's happened in the music industry, the revenues are dropping rapidly, even as digital sales increase. In other words, the physical dollars-to-digital-sense scenario is playing out again in the video industry.

While there are multiple reasons for revenue drops in the music and video industries, one bit of irony is that the decline of physical CDs for the music industry roughly coincided with the debut of the DVD.