Cds demise, or not?

It's bad for me. I stream music in the car. I listen to terrestrial radio in the car. I listen to satellite radio in the car. But I also listen to tons of CD in the car. CDs of music that isn't available on streaming I keep duffel bags of CD in my car of the likes of Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D., or, like Mosaic's 11 CD box of '30s Ellington, or Steve Coleman's Functional Arrhythmias (non of Pi records albums, and that's a major avant garde jazz label, is available on any streaming service). The process of loading all that crap onto a computer and then on to a DAP and then the DAP doesn't really integrate well with the car (I get no heads up display or controls of what I'm playing from the dash with my FIIO), is a complete chore. I never do it and when I do it basically means I never listen to the music: I have a bunch of stuff on my DAP that I don't have on any other format, and I just basically never listen to it. For me, my car comes off lease in November, and I think rather than get a new lease I'm going to convert the old lease to purchase because I love the audio system in it and because a car without a CD player is a non-starter for my lifestyle.

 

This is true.

I misread a chart earlier and represented the numbers as share of total sales, it's actually format share of albums and album equivalent consumption, so slightly different, but per Nielsen, in the first half of the year, physical media was about 15% of the albums market, downloads was about 18%, streaming was 66%.

But I think there are such substantial difference by genre that this forum, which consists mostly of rock fans, offers a skewed picture.

For example, according to Nielsen, R&B and Hip-Hop are the most popular music genres for sales and streaming of recorded music in the US combined comprising 32% of the market but only 15.5% of album sales, only 12.2% of physical albums sales. It's streaming that drives the sector, hip-hop and R&B has 36.4 percent of the streaming market.

By contrast rock, which still has 23.1% of the market, represents 41.2% of total album sales at 44.2% of physical album sales and only 17.7% of the streaming market.

So if a rock fan on the forum is drawing conclusions from his or her own experience with a genre where physical album sales represent 44% of the market and streaming only 17.7%, they may miss the big picture of the shift that's underway.

 

I always wonder how long services such as Spotify will keep a more or less "complete" catalog. There will come a time when they say "why do we keep space for this silly old music and obscure artists that almost no one listens two. It's just storage space and it makes our databases slow". As a result some music will become extinct for streaming.

 

Simple, people who don't really care about music switched format to save space at home.

 

Lots of music isn't streaming even now. If, like me, you listen to contemporary jazz, you'll find that there are major labels that aren't streaming (like Pi), or that you need to purchase individual albums via Bandcamp and stream them one by one (or download them), because they're not available via a subscription service. I understand the economics of streaming drive these decisions, but I think in the long run, the market is going to be moving so substantially to streaming that the risk is that these labels and artists-owned projects, just become next to invisible and inaccessible. Personally, I wish Bandcamp would start a monthly streaming service with better sound, an easy interface, and great integration with cars. I'd use that. But at this point I almost won't buy a new album unless I'm able at least to stream it first in its entirety. And then I'll own buy it on hard copy if I know I'm going to listen to it over and over and over for some years and I'm going to want to hear it on my big home audio rig. If I like it but don't love it and will only listen to it once or twice a decade or two (and I dunno if I have two decades left to live), or if I only car about it for casual listening, I'll never buy it. Given the numbers we see with the adoption of streaming and the decline of physical media and downloadable albums, I don't think I'm an anomaly. I wonder if in the long run, label that aren't making material available on popular streaming platforms are just painting themselves into a niche where the audience will just ultimately cease looking.

 

Well said. While I understand that some content on these streaming sites is removed due to licensing expiration or other legal issues, this means the album or song you planned on being able to hear for many years to come could become no longer available at any given time and that is a huge risk. As someone who used Netflix before they removed a great deal of content, I'm fearful the same thing could happen with streaming music. Due to the very nature of licensing, nothing can entirely prevent content removal. For that reason, CDs and vinyl will remain my preferred formats.

 

Thank god for Amazon

 

I love cds and LPs too. I just upgraded my CD player and it cost me a lot. I have never heard sounding so good!! Cds wont ever be obsolete to me and millions of other people. I promise.

 

I recently bought, for less than $1 each, a couple of 80s classical CDs that turned out to have problems even thought there were no visible flaws. Other than that, I can't remember a similar problem with a manufactured CD.

 

It's obviously not that they don't care about music -- they care about music enough to maybe buy a monthly subscription to a music streaming service, to choose what they want to listen to, to make playlists to listen to or to play when they're cooking or commuting or cleaning the house, etc. They're not using recorded music really very differently than most people have every used recorded music. They just prefer buying it as a cheap, uber convenient bundled service that's accessible wherever they are vs. as a more expensive, discrete product that's tied to the physical location of the product.

 

I think you're on target. Most of us know about the Dunhill tapes being thrown into a landfill to save space, and it was only a few years after the tapes had been used to store major hits. I believe the same happened on the video side with MGM, but fortunately many of the video sources had been saved before complete damage was done. You'll see the streaming services begin to cut large chunks out of their catalogs when there is a big dip in their incomes. And they'll use the line that you provided.

 

Thank you. I feel better now.

 

I agree with you, but would like to add that in the "old" days people would use the radio for that function. Now, with so many markets not having much variety in format streaming has become the way you get generic music into your environment. I'd be interesting in knowing what percentage of streaming listeners who do not buy much physical hardware listen for any specific artist where they would want the artist's songs two or three years from now. But I agree that with smartphones and newer car stereos portability is what many streamers want.

 

When we can get these back in cars,it will be the final days of CD's..now how to keep your records cool while driving in the summer
For the record..i love both formats,they each have their +'s




maybe some celebrity endorsements!

 

CDs keep arriving at my house in parcels.
Whoever is sending them to me can you please understand this ..... The CD is dead.

 

It's a strange new world, isn't it? You'd think in the internet world all our choices would be enhanced, not limited.
But then, is it any worse than the days when your choice was what the retailer decided to put in the record bin? Everything changes, everything stays the same.

 

That’s it in a nutshell. I don’t know why there is so much apparent glee about the decline of physical media sales. Streaming is the work of the devil

 

My, my, hey, hey, compact disc is here to stay.

 

Yes and no. Streaming is self directed, listeners choose what they want to hear, they make playlists, or stream whole albums, etc. It's not equivalent to radio and I don't think it displaces radio as much as it apparently displaces downloads and physical media sales.

 

Best Buy can roll over and die as far as I’m concerned.

 

I’m with you there brother!

 

They think your house is a cemetry

 

At some moment Spotify will tell you you're weird because you want to hear something else than Jay Z, Beyonce or Justin Beaver.

 

And we think texting and driving is bad -- try flipping a 7" 45 at 60 mph!

 

I haven't read every post so this may have been mentioned already. Independent artists, touring bands etc. need something to sell on the road and through their websites. People like something to hold in their hands, look at, read liner notes. You can't do that with a code to access a download, and you can't provide anything physical with streaming and streaming services may not include your music. These artists will probably always offer CDs for sell at their table. Hopefully vinyl too, but vinyl costs about twice as much to manufacture. If you are playing at the local sports bar on Thursday night, the local fall festival Saturday afternoon, and a club on Friday night, CDs make a lot of sense. They don't take up a lot of space, add a sharpie and you can sign them, you can press a 1,000 for a reasonable cost and make a few buck per unit, sell them and press another 1,000. I think there will be a place for CDs.