‘It’s a different feeling altogether:’ Why physical media is making a comeback

Picture this: it’s a fall day in 2006. You invite your friends over, pop way too much microwave popcorn and hit play on your box set of “The Office.”

Except, it’s not 2006. It’s 2025. And you don’t own a box set of “The Office,” you watch it on Netflix. Or, at least, you did, until Netflix removed it in 2021.

This is the state of movie night for a growing number of people, as the distributors behind popular movies, shows and music go full-tilt into the world of digital media, leaving viewers in an increasingly unbalanced scene.

Some people feel this is a new revolution that will change the future of engaging with media. Others think that, too, but with less of a smile on their faces.

How did we get here?

Perhaps more importantly, what do we do now?

The Death of the DVD

Instantly watch as many movies as you want! For only $7.99 a month.

That was Netflix’s selling point when they launched their streaming service in 2007. Rather than ordering a movie from Netflix’s website, waiting for a little red envelope with a DVD in it to arrive at your house and then making sure to watch it in time to return it by the due date, you could just find the movie you wanted, click on it and watch. Even better, their library of around 1,000 movies and shows at launch meant you could watch, well, as many movies as you want.

A New York Times article about the service’s launch at the time said that it just might have reversed Netflix’s “impending death”- but it also likely led to the death of the otherwise reigning way to watch movies, the DVD.

When the DVD was introduced in 1996, it quickly overtook the VHS as the de facto media format due to its better image quality and distinct lack of rewinding. By 2005, the format would reach its peak of $16.3 billion nationwide, making up roughly 64% of the U.S. home video market. Their dominance wouldn’t last long, however, and a downturn began as early as one year later, in 2006. This was for a variety of reasons- the rush to buy as many DVDs as possible at the beginning of the craze meant that most people purchased a collection a year ago, and many people had a library large enough to make buying even more discs unnecessary. Most significantly, though, was the beginning of the Great Recession in December of 2007.

As the effects of the recession spread across the country, the cost of buying anything went up. According to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of a dozen eggs rose from $1.63 in August to over $2 in December- an increase of almost 23 percent. With price fluctuations like these affecting nearly every kind of purchase, spending $20 on a DVD of “Transformers” felt less economically viable.

For consumers re-evaluating their weekly budgets then, the prospect of spending less money monthly to get a larger library of movies felt like a no-brainer. So, it’s likely that Netflix isn’t solely responsible for the end of the DVD, they just followed the trends that were already taking place.

But, as more companies followed those trends and shifted their focus to video-on-demand, fewer produced DVDs, meaning that consumers shifted their money toward video-on-demand, meaning more companies shifted their focus to video-on-demand, meaning that consumers shifted their money toward video-on-demand, meaning that- you get the idea.

By June of 2009, the market had mostly recovered. But public opinion had shifted to view video on demand as the future of home media- and, in the words of information technology professor Michael Smith, “once they go digital, they don’t go back to DVD.” The tides were turning once again.

The Rise of Streaming

While Netflix’s 1,000-title-deep film library seemed revolutionary at the time, the next decade was about to change what the term “streaming service” even meant. Seeing the control Netflix had of the home video market, every major media company decided to push back by launching their own, so-called “second generation,” streaming services. Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount+ all launched during the three years between 2019 and 2021.

The influx of options – and the content shuffle that came with it, as every company rushed to get their properties off of third-party services – completely transformed the landscape of home media, and introduced the streaming wars.

As 2021 rolled onward, every service prepared for battle. Disney+ was developing 50 new streaming-only series. Netflix would produce so many originals that it would take up nearly half of their total library. HBO Max would receive all 17 Warner Bros. feature films made in the upcoming year at the same time as theaters would. Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav would later say the company’s strategy was “to spend money with abandon while making a fraction in return, all in the service of growing sub numbers.” In these trenches, success was mandated, regardless of what it took to get there.

As it turns out, though, success took massive amounts of debt.

Are You Still Watching?

Studies showed that, even by 2019, more people in the US paid for a streaming service than for cable television- and the average American paid for four of them. Despite this, many services were quick, and consistent, in announcing price hikes. According to data from J.D. Power, the average cost of being subscribed to the major streaming services rose from $38 to $75 between 2020 and 2024, nearly doubling in just four years.

The reason for this isn’t (exclusively) because these behemoth corporations want to squeeze their customers for every penny they have. It’s because running a streaming service has never been profitable.

Most services launched with a ‘too-good-to-be-true’ offer for new users- just giving it to them. Having HBO Now (a way to watch HBO shows) would automatically give you HBO Max, a year of AppleTV+ came free with the purchase of any Apple product and certain unlimited data plans with Verizon would come with six months of Disney+ for free. On top of that, each streaming service put millions yearly into their respective original programming, plunging them further into the red. This business model, of throwing money at the product and hoping it eventually works, was never sustainable, and as Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav later admitted, “deeply flawed.”

But failure wasn’t an option. So, in addition to those ever-increasing price hikes, streaming services tried every possible strategy to navigate out of the nosedive. The bundle, made famous at the launch of streaming, is back. Paramount+ can be bundled with Showtime, Disney+ with Hulu, Hulu with Max, Hulu with ESPN+, and even Disney+ with Hulu and Max. Notably, though, these bundles make customers pay for at least one service to get another.

Bigger still is the process of services completely removing content from their libraries. Sometimes, it’s to license to another service, but often the content levels without going anywhere else- especially significant for streaming-exclusive titles.

Why would studios want less content on their flagship products? There are a couple of reasons.

The first, and most talked about, is “for tax write-offs.” Recently, Disney announced that they’d taken a $1.5 billion write-off- that could then grow to nearly $1.8 billion- as a result of removing content. This strategy hinges on studios claiming that a movie or show could never make back the money it cost to make, and thus it’d be a more financially wise choice to just call it a day and get a return on their budget.

As author David Offenberg points out, however, that alone wouldn’t get studios enough money to make it worth the lost content. Having that content on the platform, though, is actually costing the studios money.

As television grew, a system called “residuals” was put in place, where everyone involved in making a show got paid a little bit of money every time that show aired after the initial airing – if the show made money, the people that made the show also made some money. While not nearly as high, creatives do get paid a flat residual fee every year that their show is on the service. So, removing it could get the studio a monetary kickback, and it removes an expense. The battlefield of the streaming wars is led by the pocketbook – and if the pocketbook doesn’t want a show in the trenches, it doesn’t stay there.

Alright… Now What?

So – the revolution that was promised during the explosion of streaming services never quite came to pass.

Except… It kind of did.

By 2023, streaming services were responsible for 86% of the home entertainment market – price hikes and content removals and all. The DVD, for its part, is in no shape to fight back, only making up 10% of the market. As tech hubs like Best Buy further pull back on DVD sales – both in store and on their website – to “bring customers new and innovative tech for them to explore,” the tides don’t seem to be changing.

Alissa Nutting, writer of a show removed from Max back in 2022, described her feeling after she discovered her work’s fate when a friend sent her a link to an article about it: “I remember feeling like, OK, like, nothing’s safe.” This is what experts in the industry call “streaming anxiety”- the fear that, for the first time since the early 1900s, any project could become lost media. The only difference is that these wouldn’t be lost due to nitrate film catching on fire. They would just disappear.

All of these factors have led to the increasing complexities of engaging with any media. The solution, for many people, is to hold onto physical media anyway, despite its decline – something Houston Matters producer Garrett Bohlmann describes as “a state of decline and renaissance at the same time.”

In a guest essay with the Internet Archive, BBC News and VICE writer JD Shadel muses that “if you don’t save it, even if it seems like it’s everywhere momentarily, it will just as quickly disappear.”

So, people save it.

2022 was the first year since 1987 that vinyl outsold CDs. That happened again in 2023.

Grand Rapids Community College students said that they have a number of streaming services, with Netflix and Hulu being the most popular. Notably, though, many said they only use the services that their family has but don’t – and wouldn’t – subscribe to any themselves. When it comes to physical media, the results were much broader, students had records, CDs, DVDs, physical video games, even cassette and VHS tapes.

“I think (physical media is) really important to keep, kinda, just, like, keep us kinda grounded,” said 18-year-old art major Micah Hernandez.

“I guess it, like, takes you back,” said 23-year old criminal justice major Taylor Vachan. “I feel like sometimes technology can, I guess, get in the way of things.”

For GRCC student Isaac Thom, physical media helps him connect to the media on a deeper level.

“I definitely think there’s a different kind of respect,” said Thom. “I feel like when I put on a record with my friends, it’s more something that we’re listening to. But, when I, like, plug in my aux and, like, Bluetooth, or whatever, it’s more, like, in the background.

For others, it’s about connecting with each other. The Collegiate reported last year on GRCC brothers Kevin and David Lyons, and their 50,000 record-strong collection.

“It was always the two of us, it was something we did together, and there was something magical about that,” David told The Collegiate.

Twenty-five-year-old general major Cas Eavey trades physical games with friends as a way to connect and try new games.

“I just lent my friend my copy of Super Mario 3D World for the Switch, and in return, I got Link’s Awakening, which is a game I don’t own. I get to play the game, and then give it back. And now, I have a new experience. You just can’t do that with … digital media,” Eavey said.

Of course, no solution is perfect.

“(Physical media is) expensive, for one. I think that’s one of the really big drawbacks of it,” Thom said.

On the other hand, 22-year-old theater major Sarah Kremer has the opposite opinion, saying “I think it is important to have physical media because not everyone can afford a streaming service.”

Peter Vanderhorn, an 18-year-old nutrition student, prefers the freedom of choice that physical media gives, saying, “I’d rather know that I can physically feel it and have it in my hands.”

Isaac Thom, meanwhile, sees a less physical benefit to it.

“It’s emotional,” Thom said. “And I think that’s the power in it. The emotion that it captures.”

Ultimately, all of the reasons people engage with physical media boil down to the same thing – choice. They want, and have always wanted, to create the experience that means the most to them, that they can take agency in. Whether it’s the grooves of a record, the tactile feel of buttons on a controller, or the seven incorrect password attempts of Disney+, the future of media is – in the words of JD Shadel – “what we make it.”