Death of the Video Store

The business and technology world have been chiming about disruptive technologies changing entertainment, media and retail industries for years. With the maturation of the broadband Internet, cheap storage solutions and compression technologies in full bloom, it is apparently coming to fruition. (BTW, great book by Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma)

This hit me recently when a neighborhood video store that had likely been a fixture for more than a decade or two (the video zone), was bulldozed down.

I didn’t become a Netflix member until about a year ago. Now I can’t imagine watching movies without it using its service. My queue is 40+ movies long and I don’t even have to think about it!

I have friends with TIVO and DVRs that don’t equate TV shows with actual program day/time schedules (i.e. what do you mean Survivor is on Thursday’s? I usually catch up on all my TV shows on Saturday afternoons without commercials).

We all know the next step has already been proven by iTunes. Why wait for DVDs in the mail via Netflix? Why wait until a show has been run to record it? Before we know it, we’ll have a little black, wireless box in our closets (probably powered by Google) that we can order and store on demand any media we want….watching/listening/enjoying it on demand, when we want to and how we want to (TV/Computer monitor/remote speakers/mobile device).

Now I wonder what they are going to replace our local video store with?

Good portion of the long tail is now available free: check it out.