Digital movie sales up 47% in 2013 as studios allow digital purchases before rental, physical
Sales of Online Movies Jumps; DVDs Continue to Decline — Delaying Availability of DVDs, Rentals Nudged Consumers … After years of trying to convince consumers to buy movies online …
Context & Ripple Effects
The home-entertainment business has been bracing for this crossover for years: US DVD sales were already falling hard by 2011 — down 20% in one stretch — while analysts noted that internet viewing would surpass disc consumption long before it matched disc revenue. What held the line was the studio release calendar, which kept discs and rentals first and digital purchases last. The 47% jump reported for 2013 came only after studios flipped that order, releasing digital versions ahead of physical.
The playbook has a precedent the industry has watched before: in music, digital purchases rose even as album sales collapsed after labels let downloads lead the market back in 2007. Studios are now running the same sequencing experiment on film, betting that ownership-minded buyers will pay full price online rather than wait for the disc — a bet aimed at the buy-versus-rent question that streaming services like Netflix have kept open.
First-order effects
- Studios capture earlier, likely higher-margin revenue by selling digital copies in a window where previously only pre-orders existed, directly offsetting the continuing DVD decline.
- Consumers who prefer owning films no longer wait for the disc date — the choice between buying online and renting or buying physical is now made on day-and-date-ish terms tilted toward digital.
Second-order effects
- Retailers and rental channels lose their exclusive early-window position, forcing disc-side players to compete on price and packaging against a format the studio itself is prioritizing.
- Streaming-first services face a sharpened distinction: studios are now actively steering spend toward permanent digital purchases, pressuring the rental and subscription value proposition at the top of the release cycle.
Third-order effects
- If the reordered window holds, the traditional theatrical-to-DVD cadence gives way to a digital-first ladder, with physical media becoming a late-cycle collector product rather than the anchor of home entertainment.
- The pattern mirrors what happened in recorded music after 2007 — digital purchases rising as the old format falls — suggesting film's revenue base migrates from unit-shipped discs to account-based digital libraries, reshaping how studios price and sequence every release.
The trend: Home entertainment is moving through a digital-first transition in which studios reorder release windows themselves — the same download-led shift music underwent years earlier — making windowing strategy, not consumer habit alone, the lever that decides when physical media dies.