The next time you walk into a Best Buy, there might not be a CD in sight.
According to Billboard, the retail giant is telling music suppliers that “it will pull CDs from its stores come July 1.” The company is said to bring in about $40 million annually from CD sales – no small potatoes – but with CD sales down 18.5 percent last year, apparently there are bigger fish to fry inside those boxy blue & yellow buildings. In a smidgen of poetic justice/irony, Best Buy plans to keep selling vinyl records for at least two more years, thanks to a commitment to vendors.
So that got us thinking: How much longer before Blu-rays, 4K Blu-rays, and DVDs are yanked from Best Buy store shelves?
According to trade organization Digital Entertainment Group, U.S. physical disc sales brought in $4.7 billion in 2017. Sounds great, right? But that number was down 14% over 2016, and 2016’s take was down nearly 10% over 2015. But let’s face it, statistics aren’t really necessary to see this trend. When was the last time you bought a disc? OK. And when was the last time you fired up Netflix? Exactly.
2016 was the first year that subscription streaming services outranked disc sale profits, and the smart money says the balance of power has now permanently shifted. So let’s dust off the old crystal ball and go on the record with a prediction: Best Buy will yank Blu-rays from its store shelves sometime in 2022.
Personally, I buy most of my Blu-rays from Amazon, but I did snag Moana from Best Buy last Black Friday and I’d much rather have a healthy stock of discs to peruse in-store than see another 60 square feet of space go to mobile phones. I can’t be alone in thinking that if Best Buy removes CDs, Blu-rays, and – you know this one’s coming too – video game discs, my trips to the brick and mortar stores will only decrease.
