Amazon is shutting down its DVD rental service in the UK and Germany this fall. The service, Lovefilm, was acquired by Amazon in 2011, and does not operate anywhere else in the world, according to Variety.
For a monthly subscription fee, Lovefilm users receive a DVD or Blu-ray disc of their choice in the mail, and mail it back when they’re finished. The service, similar to Netflix’s DVD plan, struggled to compete in a market dominated by streaming services.
Lovefilm, but not DVDs
“In the past years, a growing number of customers have made use of streaming services while the demand for renting DVD and Blu-ray discs has declined at the same time,” Amazon said in a statement to Variety.
Netflix’s DVD service, on the other hand, is still up and running — for now. The company released a standalone app in the US called DVD Netflix this past January, so that users could organize their rentals. A little more than 4 million people still subscribe to the company’s DVD plan, but that number is small compared to Netflix’s 94 million streaming subscribers. And the number of Netflix DVD subscribers has been dwindling over the years, according to the AP.
An Amazon spokesperson told BBC that Lovefilm plans to donate its DVDs to charity. The service will officially shut down on October 31st, 2017.