CD's Gone By 2020?

From a nostalgic point of view, I will be sad to see CDs go, whenever that is.

Realistically, though, I have preferred lossless downloads over CDs for new releases for at least the past 5 years. I always buy hi-res when available, and even for 16/44, I only buy the CD if the price is significantly better than the download price. Even when I do buy a CD, it gets ripped to lossless, placed on the media shelf, and eventually ends up in a box under the stairs when the shelf fills up.

In all honesty, I am more concerned about the potential demise of lossless downloads than that of CDs, though I certainly hope that one or the other hangs on for awhile.

I have tried lossless streaming, and I am slowly learning to at least preview albums on TIDAL before I buy them. But even when I add a TIDAL album to my Roon library, I don't really feel like it's in my collection until I buy it.

 

Sadly it would seem you're in the minority.
It also has to be remembered that there are a few folks in our older age group that are so terrified of being uncool that they will do anything to try and stay on the (apparent) cutting edge ... Even if it does slice one's own genitals off

 

That logic seems pretty solid to me.

 

Yeah, and I know a lot of 30 and 40-somethings who are keeping their CD collections but not buying new CDs while 20-somethings look at CDs like rotary phones and aren't holding onto them even if they ever had them.

 

Project Fear attempted to bring down plastic at the expense of the CD. How ironic Project Fear is now attempting to bring down the CD for Streaming whilst keeping Plastic!

 

You are right to be concerned about the disappearance of downloads (or relegation to fringe status). The RIAA stats for the last 4 or 5 years have shown that Downloads sales are declining as fast or faster than CDs sales. This is distressing to me because HiRes Downloads are more likely to be of Albums than occurs with streaming. We are looking at the demise of Albums. The particular format matters less than that loss. This Forum is atypical.

 

Shall I PM you my address?

 

I don't believe "download only" is the plan. I believe the end-game is limited-term rental of all content, no permanent possession.

 

Rotary phones are on trend.

 

I think it happens with reissues, not recently released titles (unless the artist is producing them themselves).

 

Vinyl going from top mainstream format to a niche market was a consumer choice.

Vinyl nearly becoming extinct was the labels' choice.

Streaming supplanting CDs (and downloads) is a consumer choice.

CDs disappearing while they are still massively outselling vinyl and cassettes in their near-terminal decline would have to be the labels' choice.

 

Actually, I'd prefer the major labels get out of the cd business and turn it over to smaller independents like Mofi, AP and cdbaby. People who care about music and sound quality are too small a market for the majors to be bothered with.

Let's let the majors handle all the big selling crap music and overly compressed or poorly recorded good music, and have smaller companies who care about music and sound quality cater to the small but loyal segment of the market who also care about that stuff.

I don't know if that's the way it will play out, but it could.

 

If only those smaller companies were interested in, or able to access "big selling crap music" instead of another reissue of What's Going On.

I daresay a company could do okay niche/boutique business rescuing loudness war victims, but they'd have to be able to release digitally as well to survive.

 

Plenty of stores here in Vienna with large cd departments all doing good business on new cd's.

I actually bought a new cd this morning that was released today, Primal Scream's Maximum Rock and Roll

 

Yup, and it's working. Why? Because it's cheaper to rent all that music. We will regret the acceptance of streaming one day, and those of us who bought (and backed-up) all the music we could will be sitting pretty.

 

Let's list all the will be gone and obsoletes by...……………….

2 channel music
vinyl
analog
tubes

Oh wait they are still here, the only ones really gone are the predicters ……..

 

I've been looking for that other thread about audio quality and the general populace (have not found it yet). But anyway, I've seen a lot of responses above where it is suggested that there's a correlation between CD sales and audio quality -there isn't. For the most part, manufacturers or labels do not care about the audio quality of their product because it's not a variable. The general populace doesn't care about it, they just need a disc to insert in a tray and push play. There's of course a niche of buyers who care and who may refrain from purchasing CDs for that very reason, but they're just a small group.

In my experience the purchase of a CD is largely psychological. I'd dare to say that the majority of sales are "impulse" driven and I've seen dozens of times when a customer entered a store, never had the intention of buying anything, and yet leaves the store having bought two or three CDs that he/she never even intended to buy. I'm sure there exist customers who reason, analyze and ponder their purchase but for the most part when people buy a CD they're largely moved by emotion. Which also explains why CDs aren't a necessity good: they don't fulfill any primary or basic human needs and nobody has ever died for lacking CDs in their lives.

 

Makes sense. For new cd's I generally buy new releases, not older catalog items.

 

Vinyl is not now niche (I'm surprised I'm even saying this). As far as I can tell most major releases are currently getting released on vinyl.

 

Not me. I've never accepted it, nor been in a position to prevent others from accepting it.

 

Really? That's not how I remember it, it might be because we're in different continents or we focus on different things. Anyway, I remember CDs were a novelty and kind of niche from their release until about 1988ish. From then on every major release was on all three formats, and stores stocked all three of them. Around 1992/93 stores cleared their vinyl out, from then on it was only CD and cassette. Cassette eventually dwindled.

 

Not my experience at all. I got one cd-r out of hundreds of new releases over the last 10 years. Perhaps I am lucky. The feeling of buying cd-r instead of pressed ones diminish my shopping experience.

 

Depends where you're coming from. If you already own a sizeable collection containing most of what you like to listen to, renting is an additional cost. If you own no music, it's cheaper than building a new collection, at least in the short run. Over the years it might not be.

 

I'm another 53 year old (1st year of gen X), and a music fanatic. We are all "Outliers" here and particularly the over 50 folks. It's not really a format thing, old azzez tend to stop getting into music, generally speaking.