there's only one blockbuster video rental store left in the entire world
but somehow those redbox kiosks still seem to be outside of every shopping
center in the u.s in fact they have around 40 000 of them which is about
triple the number of mcdonald's locations in america
so how is redbox still such a common site in a world that's now dominated by
streaming well although streaming services typically offer lots of content for a
pretty low monthly fee there's still a pretty big gap in the market lots of the
movies on streaming services particularly recent releases are only
available for an additional one-time rental fee that can run up to around six
dollars by contrast redbox still rents dvds and blu-rays for just two bucks a
pop and if you're out shopping anyways it doesn't even cost additional gas
money to make a special trip to rent a movie as redbox focuses its business in
places where folks are already concerned with cutting costs are likely to shop
stores like walmart and other discounters even people who pass through
the areas would rather just rent a two dollar film from redbox once or twice a
month instead of spending 15 bucks in the same time period on a streaming
subscription especially as streaming is becoming more fragmented often requiring
tv and movie fans to subscribe to several of the services to access all
the content they want those monthly fees can add up quickly redbox is most
popular in smaller metropolitan and rural areas that have relatively lower
costs of living places that are more likely to have people on the hunt for a
good deal as well as less likely to have access to broadband for streaming
combine this with how redbox often has movies a customer might not be able to
access on their streaming service and suddenly their business model kind of
makes sense and the fact that a vending machine is a heck of a lot cheaper than
running to a brick and mortar store definitely doesn't hurt but is
continuing to rent out physical dvds actually sustainable we'll tell you
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so even though redbox has carved out a niche for itself with physical disk
rentals they've still been facing declining revenues for the past few
years even with the advantages their kiosks offer the part of redbox customer
base that is stuck with dvds and blu-rays because they're late adopters
of the new tech have started to gravitate more towards streaming with
ever-increasing broadband speeds helping to push more people away from disks so
while redbox isn't planning to just abandon its kiosks in the immediate
future it's also dipped its toes into the streaming wars they have an app for
most platforms like your phone smart tv or streaming stick that offer free live
streaming services of ad-supported movies and episodes kind of like pluto
or 2b redbox also has individual rentals like on prime video or itunes though
they're more expensive than renting their dvds even for the same movie
meaning you're paying for that kind of convenience of not having to go to the kiosk kind of like how a hotel minibar
works but is this going to be enough to compete with other services where
streaming is their bread and butter instead of a more recent add-on redbox's
plan seems to be to try and create partnerships with multiple studios and
content distributors to make its app kind of a one-platform for everything
type of solution instead of having to go to six different apps to watch all of
your content combined with a loyalty program and original content redbox
hopes they'll be able to differentiate themselves from other competitors in the
crowded streaming market only time will tell if they're able to pull it off but
until they figure it out you can still dust off your old dvd player and slide
in a freshly rented disk there's just something comforting about it
especially when it doesn't work because it's all scratched so thanks for
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