“It’s dying. It will go obsolete like the floppy disc did."

[gurnemanz]

I know we've done this many times before but now a book has been written on the demise of the CD, from which the above is a quote. No doubt the CD is in decline but it is surely not comparable to a floppy disc with its very limited memory capacity. An album on CD can still be a desirable physical object to own (and give as a present), which a floppy disc certainly never was.

[teamsaint]

It is going obsolete in the same way books are.......

the way CDs are retailed will change, sales will decline slowly, but the means of reproducing the sound is going to be around for a long time, and is still small and easy to use.

We already have a situation with multiple CD markets, such as premium , meaning well bundled and packaged, as well as budget reissues.

People are still very attached to stuff, enough to keep markets and supply going for a good while yet.

And many artists are also very attached to the concept of physical media, I suspect.

Digital reproduction also means that where record companies still exist they need, in general, to exploit all revenues. This is what is happening in book publishing.

[pastoralguy]

And many artists are also very attached to the concept of physical media, I suspect.

You can't ask Cecilia Bartoli to sign your download...

[teamsaint]

You can't ask Cecilia Bartoli to sign your download...

I'd like to see somebody try though
come to think of it, I 'm up for it !!

[verismissimo]

Becoming extinct like vinyl?

[umslopogaas]

I think it is more likely to go the same way as the LP: it will decline to a niche market, but then it will become collectible, and then a new wave of musicians will come along who will put out their music on CD as well as downloads, just as there are now musicians who put out new material on LP as well as CD and download (my local hifi shop has a rack of brand new issues of pop and rock on LP. He doesnt actually stock CDs, other than a few for demonstration purposes).

I dont think the analogy with the floppy disc holds: it was superceded by clearly superior media, and also its content was only of transient interest. I have a box full of them in a cupboard, but I have no interest in reading them (reports, letters and project proposals from thirty years ago) and anyway, have nothing to read them with. A CD by comparison is a permanent record of a performance and fifty years on it will still be interesting to hear it. It would be more accurate to say that both floppy discs and CDs will become obsolete, but only in one case will obsolescence lead to extinction, in the other it may even lead to an increasing demand.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

People write articles and books for two reasons:

1. They believe what they say is true.
2. They make money out of it.

Sometimes they are right.
Sometimes they are wrong.

[richardfinegold]

CD sale declines have leveled off. They have stabilized at 30% of their peak around 2000. That is still a lot of CDs. I don't think they will go away in our lifetime.