The other 'oil glut': Why physical media refuses to die
It's not as if Napster or Netflix never happened. It's just that these vast reserves of our cultural past keep fueling new generations of fans for a variety of reasons.
The current stockpile in the headlines is Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels of heavy crude oil, the world’s largest proven petroleum reserves—about 17% of the global total.
Oil remains our daily lifeblood (around 30% of energy), even with renewables on the rise and oil supply outstripping demand in 2026, the year of the glut.
I assume you’re already consuming a steady diet of stories about Venezuela, a country that has spent years struggling to convert geology into stability, as well as tragic reports out of Iran and—much closer to home—Minnesota. All I can do with this post is offer a fleeting interlude and turn your attention to a different type of oil glut in the form of generations of cultural byproducts stowed in basements, bookshelves, and attics everywhere:
20 billion vinyl LPs
20 billion VHS tapes
30 billion CDs
50 billion DVDs (including Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD titles)
Long after the great boom years of vinyl, CDs, DVDs, and VHS, the world is still awash in them. This dispersed oil deposit in the form of physical media has grown for nearly a century—from Sinatra serenading “bobby soxers” to modern legions of Swifties.
AI analysis of valid industry sources helped me arrive at the above conservative estimate of overall manufacturing totals of the various formats. I also crunched the numbers on how many of these spinning relics are produced from one barrel of oil—factoring in only the material of the actual discs, without any of the packaging or energy used to transport and market them. By that calculation, one barrel supposedly yields:
600 LPs, or
5,500 DVDs, or
6,000 CDs
The turn of the 21st century represented peak production of physical media, when Britney and the rest of the teen pop industry could easily move 1 million discs in a week and Tony Soprano became the don of DVDs.
The early 2000s may have been the single most material-intensive media moment in history thanks to this flood of optical discs.
Whatever your generation, this may feel like quaint history considering we’ve long since pivoted hard into the streaming era. Streaming now accounts for more than 80% of global music industry revenue and has taken over TV.
But here’s the thing: Physical media never really died. It refuses to die.
I described these billions of discs and tapes as littering basements, bookshelves, and attics, but it’s more accurate to say they’ve been surging out of dusty corners and back into stores everywhere as the secondhand market gains momentum.
Taking back control of our listening and viewing habits
Enter Chris DeLine, proprietor of Iowa’s newest specialist physical media retailer, Razzle Dazzle Music & Movies in Cedar Rapids, open since December. His address strikes me as completely appropriate to his product: Just like Season 3 of “Stranger Things,” his setting is a shopping mall—Lindale Mall, which debuted as an indoor marketplace in 1980.
“The ability to be around and interact with people who are passionate about the same stuff is pretty awesome,” he said.
DeLine, qualifying as an elder millennial at age 42, occupies a former Foot Locker—gray wall brackets still faintly visible. Where shoes once hung, rows of CDs and DVDs now stand at attention, most priced low enough to invite curiosity rather than commitment.
His typical used CD costs $2.85 or $3.85, with Gen Z snapping them up as quickly as graying hipsters. It’s a stark bargain compared to new LPs that may go for $30, $40, or more.
“I want to make sure things are affordable,” DeLine said. “Not just because I think stuff has gotten a little bit out of hand, but I want to make sure things are at a price point where you can take a risk, and it’s not going to hurt.”
I’ve been hearing how “affordability” is one of the political watchwords ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Here’s more evidence.
DeLine did not set out to become a curator of this petroleum afterlife. He’s a native of Calgary (coincidentally the capital of Canada’s oil and gas industry). Raised partly in Minnesota, he was educated at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake (business management with an entrepreneurship track) and marinated for more than a decade in Nashville’s gig-economy swirl. He also earned a master’s in clinical mental health counseling but quickly learned therapy wasn’t his calling. So, he sold his house, packed up several hundred DVDs, and moved to Cedar Rapids in 2022. He sought a mid-life reset in a city closer to friends and family who also relocated to eastern Iowa.
Razzle Dazzle began not as a storefront but as a digital business—launched from an eBay account dating back to 1999, with an Amazon marketplace pipeline added in 2024.
DeLine’s brick-and-mortar store came almost accidentally. He went to the mall looking for storage. He nearly rented a basement space once used as a smash room, where people paid to destroy objects not unlike those he now sells. Upstairs, a better spot opened.
His debut month of December exceeded his sales expectations—better than any single month of his online trade. The shelves emptied faster than he could restock them. And it’s not all about affordability.
“Young people are stepping away from the streaming platforms and, just from what I hear, a lot of it’s taking back control of their viewing and listening habits,” he said.
Yes, a thousand times yes.
I’m as much a streaming addict as anybody, but I’ve also remained invested in physical media—thousands of CDs and hundreds of LPs and still counting—for my entire life. I regularly haunt DeLine’s more veteran peers in Des Moines—Zzz Records, Rogue Planet Music, Skylabs, Ratt’s Underground Records, Vinyl Cup, etc.
Unlike streaming, my owned discs don’t vanish quietly from the platform when a license expires. They wait.
When the apocalypse hits and all the networks go dark, join me at my place and we’ll bliss out to LPs and CDs, assuming I can get my 50-year-old vintage hi-fi gear hooked up to solar power.
DeLine is self-aware enough to smile at the thought of him launching a CD and DVD store in a mall in 2026 in some sort of amusingly stubborn counternarrative to the AI boom.
But he also knows that long after platforms pivot, people still like to cling to the tangible artifacts they love.
At Razzle Dazzle, the lights are on, the shelves are refilling, and the glut—cultural, plastic, thrifty—is being gently, joyfully recirculated.
1 first and 2 favorites from Razzle Dazzle’s DeLine
The first piece of physical media he owned: “Piledriver: The Wrestling Album II.”
Favorite album: “Songs for the Deaf,” Queens of the Stone Age
Favorite Canadian band: The Tragically Hip
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Wonderful article Kyle. Interesting tie-in to current events and great perspective and human interest! I am probably responsible for at least the equivalent of 1 barrel of crude. Want to by a box of vintage King of the Tramps vinyl?!