For those who enjoy their media physical or hate licensing from retailers, it sounds as if Target won't be your source for DVDs any more. Continuing a trend that picked up steam a year ago, the retailer has said it's phasing out physical media.
Over on IGN, Target announced its stores would carry DVDs only during select times, like Black Friday sales or new releases for huge films. The website will still sells DVDs.
“Moving forward, we'll offer select DVDs in stores when they are newly released or during key times throughout the year when they are more popular, like for gift giving during the holidays,” a Target spokesperson told IGN.
It appears that Target’s response was instigated by the X/Twitter account The President of Physical Media who posted that Target would stop selling physical media entirely by 2025.
Exclusive: Target Sources are telling me they reportedly will stop selling physical media in-store and online by 2025 pic.twitter.com/uTT971d1B9April 17, 2024
Target has been slowly phasing out physical media for a few years now. Their DVD and Blu-ray racks tend to split the small aisles with CDs and vinyls — other media that is also fading at Target. So, it’s no real surprise that the retail might be dropping them entirely. Even the cashiers' end caps don’t really feature DVDs or Blu-Rays anymore; instead they’ve been focusing on the latest hotness from BookTok and the growing romantasy market.
And the company isn’t alone, last year, Best Buy announced that they would stop selling DVDs and Blu-rays. Netflix killed off its DVD rental service in September of 2023 as well. Disney completely stopped shipping DVDs and Blu-rays to certain regions of the world, including Australia.
Now, for major retailers it appears that it’s just Walmart and Barnes & Noble selling physical media, but who knows how long that will last.
The ownership of physical media has been a hot topic recently as streaming services get more spendy, or in the case of Disney’s considers live channels on Disney Plus, going back to cable.
Consumers are learning that much of the media they buy through services like Amazon or Funimation are only licensed so they can go away at the whim of the company. Anime fans found themselves incensed when the Funimation app was shut down earlier this year and they learned that their purchases weren’t transferable to Crunchyroll, as those two companies merged. For years, Amazonhas run into controversy with purchased books and movies being pulled out of customers' digital libraries due to licensing issues.
For you physical media lovers or collectors looking to downsize, might we suggest a media server, perhaps running a service like Plex?
