Physical Media Still Viable?

While streaming and digital media are all the rage enabling us to simply pick up a device or click on an app on our interactive computer-TV, Brooklyn's Night Owl Video strives to keep physical media in the forefront of viewers.  In fact, their slogan is "Death to Streamers!  Physical Media Forever!"  Many of us endured the near family-like "loss" as our hometown video rental stores, whether nationally recognized like Blockbuster Video or entrepreneur owned stores, vanished from our town or city's landscape.

The resurgence of physical media, whether as a mere collector or a reluctant to change GenX'r, has had several niche placements in modern days.  For instance, between 2021 and 2022 alone there were more vinyl's record sales than CD.  In fact, the data from riaa.com shows a decline in CD units, 46.7 million to 33.4 million which equates to a 17.6% decline in dollar value.  Compared with vinyl sales increasing from 40 million units in 2021 to 41.3 million units in 2022.  In addition, 2021 had $1,044,600 in sales and increased 17.2% to $1,224,400 in the subsequent year; that's simple physical to physical medium comparison.  While we invite you to visit the 2022 Year End Music Industry Revenue Report to verify this, physical media stores such as Night Owl Video, various thrift stores, "non-profit video libraries including those located in in New Orleans, Calgary, Baltimore, and Worcester, Massachusetts, as well as a variety of retailers such as Atomic Movie Store, Orbit DVD, DiabolikDVD and Grindhouse Video." - cited from "https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/apr/23/new-york-video-store-night-owl-brooklyn"

Streaming services, in this writer's opinion, tend to have their own schedule of video libraries and when they choose to make them available and when to remove them from the library.  Note that this could also be a license-contract reason why television shows and/or movies appear, then disappear frequently.

While we can binge on recent television or the last compilation storyline movies more frequently, the library of yesteryear entertainment comes and goes at the command of the streaming owners and not the streaming viewers.  It is in this case that I appreciate the personal DVD, Blu-ray, and VHS library that I have or stores such as the ones noted earlier that strive to keep physical media, physically attainable, so that my family and I can select what we want and when we want to watch classics such as The Three Stooges or tote the latest Sonic movie in my van's DVD player as we cruise from school to home.