Blockbuster files for bankruptcy

[RawAlex]

one thing though... I mentioned to a friend of mine today (asian) that Blockbuster in the US filed for bankruptcy, and her comment was "who rents... don't you just download whatever you want?".

There is a whole generation (younger than most of us here) for whom actually paying for content (movies, music, whatever) isn't even a consideration. Either they go with friends and pay the big bucks to see the movie in the theater, or they download it off the torrent sites or the private trackers they are part of.

Rentals don't exist for them, except perhaps in the rare case they need to rip something to put online for credit. Otherwise, it's null.

You run a couple of kiosks, so you should know. How old is your average renter? I am guessing closer to 40 than 20. 10 years from now, that number will be closer to 50, unless something dramatic changes.

Blockbuster got squeezed by plenty of things, and I think it significant that the market that should be most likely to rent (people with less money to buy, aka students and younger people) wouldn't set foot in a rental store in 100 years, except maybe to get a job.

I also think they made plenty of mistakes on real estate, store sizes, and the like. Too many square feet for a very simple product.