WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Waterline Brewing hosted their first annual physical media fest on Saturday, July 20.

The event featured more than 35 vendors, food trucks and live music. Vendors sold everything from video games to DVDs to CDs and jewelry.

Nicholas Crouse has been collecting DVDs for several years and decided to take his hobby and share it with others by selling DVDs at the event.

While you could probably find most of the movies he was selling on a streaming service, he says there’s one major benefit of buying DVDs.

“A lot of it’s on streaming, but once you have streaming, you’re beholden to a certain price point and if they want to raise that price point, they can. Once you have it on physical media, you have it forever,” Crouse said.

Roxanne Beckner, owner of Roxy Box Art, has been selling vinyl stickers, prints and lanyards for 15 years.

Beckner says community events like this help give her business exposure.

“I feel like a lot of artists in the community, you know, before, especially before COVID We didn’t have events quite like this. And they’re becoming much more abundant. I think it’s important to be part of the community and share your art with people,” Beckner said.

She believes owning physical media helps support people who create media.

“They want you to have subscriptions and not physical movies but then people lose the rights to those movies,” Beckner said.

Event organizers say they plan to continue making this an annual event and they want to see it grow.

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