CD's Gone By 2020?

well there always is;

 

Definitely. As long as there is still a profit to be made on them (no matter how small) they aren't going anywhere. Some people argue that the death of record stores will lead to the death of CDs. Well not as long as Amazon (to name one) is a thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the record companies at some point do a 'Columbia House' type arrangement and have Amazon or some other distributor(s) manufacture their own CDs that they sell to save the record companies that cost.

They're kind of half way there anyway as there are currently CD-R/DVD-R "on demand" titles available from Amazon of low profit potential niche titles.

 

Not as long as Bob Dylan keeps pumping out multiple CD Box sets

 

seriously? with a the millions of BDs out there and still being produced/sold...for many, many years...if they suddenly stopped making BD players the class action suit would generated millions upon millions in law suits! LOL...
just can't be done...that's why BD, DVD units both play CDs...

 

Amazon, of course, is in the streaming music business too.

 

I don't see CDs going away anytime soon, and certainly not by 2020!

 

Haha. No.

 

Yeah, I need to get a New MacBook soon as I can pay off Dental Bills(been a brutal year), and will need to get an External Optical Drive. Might be another Year though. My Instructional Manual for my Camcorder is on a CD, so need to refer to it at times. Also, for importing CDs into my iTunes Library at times.

 

This thread makes me feel very old and sad.

 

Is the CD production volume below which CD manufacturing plants would not be economical a factor in this timeline or is that number so low as not to be a significant issue?

 

Not long. First Oppo got out of the business. Now Samsung has announced its getting out of the business of making Blu ray players.

Blu ray never really took off in the US. Blu ray disk sales are only around 5% of the video sales market in the US; DVD is still something like 57%. But households with DVD and/or Blu ray players is shrinking -- to 67% from 73% from 2017 to 2018.

 

Buy extra hardware to rip CDs onto another piece of storage hardware I have to buy? When I can just stream the stuff from a phone that I already have with me via a wireless system that interfaces seamlessly with the control system in the car? You'd have to be a glutton for punishment.

 

Well, your number is slightly off - it's 4K Blu Ray that's only 5% of the video sales market. Which isn't surprising. It's a new format, it's relatively niche, and there isn't a ton of stuff available for it. Also, with that number, it's hard to know if we're comparing apples to apples - between different versions of the same thing, how much is DVD actually making up versus BR. Without knowing how they've tabulated those numbers, I can't say.

But chances are, home media will likely become a something for specialists. I'm really interested in movies, and frankly, streaming sucks for me. I never know what's going to be available, stuff often falls out of rotation, and the quality can be hit or miss. For example, Netflix used to have From Russia with Love on their service, but the thing had so much DNR, it was unwatchable. I use streaming almost exclusively for TV shows. I suspect that physical video formats will be for the enthusiast market, much like vinyl is for music.

Of course, who knows what will happen now that streaming is fracturing. It's been a long time since I've watched a movie on Netflix.

 

Yes. Please. I hope so!

 

It had a longer run than just about any other format. Time to put it to rest and move on.

 

The trend is toward streaming, and CD sales have been declining for several years. Still, CD's sell a lot more than vinyl, and all physical music media sales combined brought in more revenue than download sales (which is also on the decline) last year. But nobody is shouting that vinyl or download sales are about to go away.

 

A lot of the electronic and indie releases I've been into lately have been some combination of digital, stream, and/or vinyl.

 

5% seems a little too low. I remember seeing sales numbers for most of the top selling physical media titles and blu-ray had actually eclipsed DVD some time ago. 4K is a niche thing, but if you go look at used bins, you'll see most of the Marvel movies and the sort actually moved more blu-ray copies than DVD's

 

And the Grateful Dead archives, which have been tapped, but by no means depleted.

For further context, I've purchased some 20 Soft Machine CD or CD/DVD releases in the past four months. There's so much out there still worth getting, and I'm not talking your garden variety stuff.

 

I bought about 200 new releases last year, in a bunch of genres, and as far as I know, every last one of them was released on CD (I bought less than half in that format, but it was available if I wanted it). Not that my experience is at all representative, but I haven't seen one whiff of a CD phase-out even though it has been threatened for the past decade and more.

For example:

I just pre-ordered CDs of a) the upcoming Raconteurs album because the CD was cheaper than the download and b) The Black Keys' new one because it wasn't even available on Bandcamp.

We're halfway through 2019, so if CDs will be gone by 2020, they'd better get on that.

 

I don't mind going digital for some purchases. Gotta get rid of the clutter in my area.

 

Didn't the CD already die, in a way, back when they started brickwalling them? Seriously, there are a bajillion CDs already out there to keep us all busy until after we are dead. As for new releases, I don't think I've bought more than a couple in the last few years; all the CDs I buy are generally used (and old). As for CDs, the next generation of hispters will discover them and CDs will make a comeback, probably by 2030. The people who care about them right now (like me), won't really miss them, will they? But as someone already pointed out, it might be wise to stock up on a few spare quality CD players.

 

Have you considered the fact that some records are COMPLETELY SILENT? I recently bought the Pallas-pressed RSD red vinyl of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's "The Spiritual." Not a bit of surface noise throughout the ENTIRE thing. Sure, older records can be noisy, but cleaning them can drastically reduce the noise.

 

Not in my opinion though I do acknowledge both are great... but I still prefer records (which is why I'm a record reviewer for AnalogPlanet).

 

Couldn't agree more. I've gotten so many records lately that I can't keep up. I guess that's the best part of being a reviewer - you have an excuse to buy LPs you don't have time to listen to!