DVD, Blu-ray heading toward obsolete as Best Buy to stop selling movies next year

Movie watchers have until this holiday season to grab all the DVDs and Blu-ray movies they can from Best Buy before the electronics retailer pulls physical movies from the shelves for good.

The Richfield retailer said this week that it will stop selling physical movies in its stores and online in early 2024. The announcement that the country's last major specialty electronics retailer will stop selling movies is the latest sign of a declining industry that has seen sinking sales as streaming has grown dominant.

"To state the obvious, the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago," Best Buy said in a statement. "Making this change gives us more space and opportunity to bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore, discover and enjoy."

Best Buy will continue to sell video games and vinyl records.

Best Buy, which stopped selling CDs in 2018, has adjusted its product mix over the years as technology has evolved, recently with an increased emphasis on growing the selection of items geared to help improve and monitor customers' health, as well as e-bikes and scooters.

For Best Buy, which is readjusting parts of its business as it deals with industry-wide declines in sales, the withdrawal from movie sales makes sense, according to some retail watchers.

"Best Buy is simply getting out of a dying category," said Neil Saunders, managing director and retail analyst at GlobalData Retail. "Although Best Buy does not dedicate a huge amount of space to physical DVDs and Blu-ray products, there are more productive things it can be doing with that space."

Matt Sargent, principal of retail consulting firm Sargent Up North, said he believes Best Buy's decision is just another indicator of the slow demise of discs and a reflection of Best Buy's core customers who visit the store for big purchases rather than impulse buys.

"The traffic [movies] was generating for Best Buy is next to null," Sargent said. "It further defines that the type of browsing that Best Buy receives is really purposeful."

Best Buy's announcement comes after streaming platform Netflix stopped shipping rental discs to its customers at the end of September.

U.S. consumer spending on physical discs and rentals dropped nearly 30% to $361 million in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, according to the Digital Entertainment Group. Meanwhile, subscription streaming spending increased more than 22% in the first quarter of this year to $8.7 billion.