dsl killed the video store

[sophiaserpentia]

Nine years ago, it was the dot-com stores that were closing left and right. Brick-and-mortar stores declared victory.

Today, it's the brick-and-mortar stores closing left and right, while dot-coms are... if not exactly thriving, doing steady business.

Case in point: how many record stores and video rental places have closed in YOUR neighborhood in the last year alone? CD sales have plunged 20% in the last year (thanks to kerrizor for the link).

What made the difference? The wide availability of DSL and broadband, plus WiFi, make it possible for web content to be delivered in the way dot-coms wanted to deliver it nine years ago. Also, Americans are more willing now to pay for expedited delivery or wait for the mail to bring things to them, than they are to walk or drive to the store.  Stores can't compete with the selection available online of just about any product, and the lack of sales tax counters the cost of shipping.

Comments

[goldoyster.livejournal.com]

When I consider how cheap it is to copy cds, and how much they charged for them for those years, it makes a lot of sense that we can get them so much more directly. My fiance posits even tv networks will eventually fall and everything will just be online.

Business models are a changing.

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

CD stores keep on only selling Beyonce though bands like the Cruxshadows are higher on the billboard chart.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I like having CDs too, if nothing else because it ensures i will have the music in whatever format i want. Used CDs though will do.

When i was younger, going to the record store was a Big Thing^TM in my life; there was just something really satisfying about flipping through LPs on a rack and examining the cover art. Looking through a selection of cassettes or CDs just isn't the same. Even after i stopped going to record stores i still spent a lot of time in bookstores, because again there's something satisfying about pulling books off the shelf, flipping through them, reading the back cover, and finally making a selection.

But most of my purchases these days are less frivolous and more directed. I know what i want already, i'm less inclined to buy something i had never heard of before; and chances are if i want to find a book on one topic or another, i won't find it even in a book-megastore. If i want to find new music, i try things out on Yahoo Jukebox rather than taking a chance on a blind music purchase.

[herbalgrrl.livejournal.com]

My wife & I regularly walk all over our neighborhood-- we go to Whole Foods by foot several times a week to pick up dinner fixin's, but walk for a movie?

Nawwwww ... that's what Movielink is for.

:)

[herbalgrrl.livejournal.com]

oops , forgot to mention that cost is a factor as well in online media, for me-- movielink has a .79 movie special on weekdays that we take advantage of pretty often.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

It's all very strange. I'd like to buy CDs but I won't buy something that's copy-protected. I can't predict how many times and to what I'm going to want to rip a CD, just for my own use - something that ought to be legally protected by the fair-use provision. The content companies aren't getting money from me to restrict my exercise of a right. So fuck 'em. (That's why I won't shop the itunes store either.) The only option I have for many releases is to get them illegally, or not listen to them at all. I avail myself of both options.

That, and automobile traffic has finally gotten so bad, and the malls so unpleasant, that actually going out to shop is physically repellant to me. I try searching out interesting locally-owned retailers and patronize them, but there are so few left. No bookstores, for example.

Sigh. It's why the recycling bin is full of corrugated cardboard every month.

[akaiyume.livejournal.com]

Considering that my issues impose limitations on exactly how much I can deal with being in public I order online. With the added benefit that online shopping for me is also less impulse driven - probably having to do with the delivery wait, if I don't get it now I'm more likely to think about if I really want it. I would feel worse about the closing if it were local instead of the local branch of whatever chain.

This is off-topic, but

[lightvortex.livejournal.com]

I live the next town over from you; would you like to meet up some time? Drop me an email if you want to.