Paris DVD rental store struggles to compete with continuous flow giants

JM Video, one of the only two remaining DVD rental stores in Paris, is a focus for film lovers and visiting actors such as Brad Pitt when they are in the city, but the ever -increasing competition of continuous flow platforms means that this institution is struggling.

The option is not the problem: The JM video has a library with more than 50,000 films, over 5,000 offered at any time on Netflix (nflo.x); It opens new tabs and more than the directories of all major streaming actors in combination.

“It’s one of the few places in Paris with a real movie collection. You can find things here that you can’t find anywhere else,” said Buff Virginie Breton, who rents DVD several times a week. But it’s not enough to keep the JM video in life.

Sky-High Paris real estate rents and a reduced customer base, combined with the arrival of continuous more streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ compress life from cave-like store Operators.

Founded in 1982, the JM Video was one of the approximately 5,000 video rental stores in France at the end of the last century, long before Netflix became a DVD rental to a pioneer streaming around 2010.

Now, France only has about 10 DVD rental stores, two of which are in Paris. Store Director Theo Bancilhon said the JM video is struggling to pay rent and salaries for its three employees and has lost about 20,000 euros ($ 24,000) over the last two years.

This month, the store launched a crowdfunding call, increasing about 26,000 euros from over 1,000 donors to less than two weeks. But it takes 35,000 euros to secure the immediate future and 65,000 to be safe in the long run, Bancilhon said.

He firmly believes in the concept of DVD rental, noting that young people in particular are interested in high quality forms. “We are a lighthouse at night that contradicts the new ways of consuming a particular culture. It is good for people to know that there is another way of approaching cinema, not driven by algorithms,” Bancilhon said.

($ 1 = 0.8445 euros)