Shrinking CD length

[LMcD]

Today's Guardian has an article that suggests that CDs are on the way out.


https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ers-end-format

As are cash and cheques, we're told - oh, yes, and wallets.

[kernelbogey]

The ppint Tim D makes is that CDs' survival was coterminous with cars with CD players - and that this has now ceased. I thought Forumites might disagree. (He doesn't refer at all to 'classical' music, though The Wheels on the Bus and Other Songs gets a mention en passant.)

[oliver sudden]

The ppint Tim D makes is that CDs' survival was coterminous with cars with CD players - and that this has now ceased. I thought Forumites might disagree. (He doesn't refer at all to 'classical' music, though The Wheels on the Bus and Other Songs gets a mention en passant.)

I see he does mention another factor, namely the end of computers having CD-playing (or at least -ripping) equipment in them as a matter of course. For him that’s less important, for me a bit more, since like lots of people I know I can definitely get by without a car but a computer is another matter entirely.

[Retune]

I see he does mention another factor, namely the end of computers having CD-playing (or at least -ripping) equipment in them as a matter of course. For him that’s less important, for me a bit more, since like lots of people I know I can definitely get by without a car but a computer is another matter entirely.

These days I use an external USB DVD/CD drive, which I suspect will be available for a long time (you can still get USB floppy drives, more than 25 years after Apple ditched internal floppy drives in the first iMac). But it might not even occur to many younger people that CDs can be ripped at all - A 20-something colleague I talked to who had bought the latest K-pop CD from a favourite band seemed quite puzzled by the idea. They all have streaming subscriptions if they want to play the music on their phones. Physical formats are for a different sort of listening, or bought to support the artist and act as tangible souvenirs. I wonder what proportion of classical CDs are ripped? Are most just taken off the shelf and played as they were intended to be?

As for the end of car CD players, vinyl seems to have survived the demise of the in-car phonograph:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMKZc_W-xto&t=150s