In 1975, adult bookstores were the major sources of adult entertainment. The top-selling media format was the paperback book (the brand Beeline comes to mind), and color magazines, annuals, and latex-compatible lotions and potions were the rage. Consumers could even purchase Vivitar projectors and lamps, as well as 8 mm film to take home and watch.
The Diamond Collection series and, of course, the famous Swedish Erotica series on 8 mm were top sellers. John Holmes, Seka, Johnny Keyes, and Aunt Peg were the contract starsof the era. Within a few years, super 8 mm "loops" with color and sound supplemented the other top source of revenue at this time: peep shows, for which the average (usually male) customer spent $8. These short films would be the way consumers of adult entertainment purchased and viewed erotica for the next five to seven years.
After a brief battle with Betamax, the VCR in 1982 hit the market, and the adult entertainment world was forever changed. Videocassette tapes revolutionized the industry—consumers no longer had to visit adult bookstores or a movie theaters to obtain adult products. Demand for erotica on 8 mm film, in paperback, magazines, and newspapers declined as neighborhood video stores put adult entertainment in virtually every household with a VCR, and the adult bookstore lost its role as the major provider of adult entertainment as consumers instead flocked to local video outlets.
Also during this time, C-band satellite came along and adult entertainment soon beamed into living rooms and bedrooms across the world—with the help of a satellite dish. Mail-order adult products also flourished, while VHS continued to reign as the preferred medium for adult content consumption. Others mediums tried to make it in the late ’80s and early ’90s: laserdiscs, videogames, and 900 numbers – to name a few came – made some headway, but nothing could conquer the VHS.
In the mid-’90s, the Internet brought with it a new territory for adult entertainment, and adult bulletin boards established forums in which adults could place ads for swinging and exchange erotica photos—all for free. Soon, the computer was selling as fast as televisions and by the late ’90s most every home had a computer, and the prevalence of the Internet marked the beginning of the end of VHS’ supremacy as the dominant medium.
Digital truly emerged in 2002 as the new preferred format in adult content delivery. DVD players became more affordable and anything digital was hot. Unlike its battle with Betamax, VHS’ substandard analog format lost to digital DVD. However, DVD did not win alone. Adult entertainment media now comprised four major businesses: adult DVD, adult Internet sites, adult in home cable/satellite, and pay-per-view/Video-on-Demand—and they were all digitally delivered. Neighborhood video stores and the remaining adult bookstores witnessed an even bigger decline in revenue for the first time in 20 years. In fact, although nearly half the cost of videocassette manufacturing, adult DVD sales never reached the sales numbers that VHS had achieved because of all the competing delivery methods for adult content.
The Internet, with myriad instant free erotica, cost retail stores hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales, while the monetary loss to pay-per-view and VoD exceeded billions. The Internet also cut into the brick-and-mortar market. Retailers need to think about expanding the mediums they sell and look toward profiting by offering video clips and downloadable material. Producers of adult content are everywhere and we now produce on-demand erotica on the Web, for PSP, ipod, and cell phone, and viewing full-length movies from your computer in high quality resolution with a fiber optic cable modem is just a click away.
In the future, download centers – rather than brick-and-mortar locations, or even Internet download websites – will have every adult film, Internet broadcast, or uploaded photo digitally available to consumers around the world. Adult entertainment distribution will eventually shift from DVD, cable, and satellite systems to download centers for portable devices, giving adult entertainment consumers and producers more choices in product and content delivery, and on-demand media will revolutionize the adult entertainment industry for the next 20 years, just as VHS did decades before.
