The Motion Picture Association of America loves to talk about how movie pirating is destroying the movie industry, but every time actual sales figures are released the numbers tell a different story. Today this happens yet again as Hollywood Reporter revealed DVD sales have increased for the first half of 2008 over 2007.
Admittedly the growth is small, with DVD sales increasing by 1.1 percent from $6.8 billion to $6.87 billion. Tom Adams, the President of Adams Media Research who performed the analysis of DVD sales doesn't seem worried about the DVD sales though. He told Hollywood Reporter, "The fact is, despite what many on Wall Street seem to think, there is very little digital downloading going on. We're talking about $118 million in 2007 spending, and about $254 million this year -- so against a $24 billion packaged media market it's really not making much of a dent at this point."
Personally, I feel it's very telling that DVD sales are still increasing. When we are hearing reports that one third of DVDs are pirated I wouldn't expect there to be any growth in sales at all, but there is. I won't deny that movie pirating is a real danger for the motion picture industry, but the data shows that most people still value having a physical DVD collection.
