Is The CD on it´s way out??

[EddieV]

I just heard that the CD´s are not selling well, people buy one songs on the internet, and don´t want to buy whole albums.

SHAME

[Harrythebannister]

I still buy 'em! Mind you, I still buy vinyl which just shows how much a dinosaur I am!!

[bobrocks]

A&B Sound is an excellent audio-video chain here in western Canada. They just shut down the store in Nanaimo, just down the road from me. At their peak they had 15 stores. They are now down to eight. A lot of the problem is they are having trouble competing with 'Best Buy' and 'Wal Mart' and places like that.
It's a drag cause although it's the stereo equipment part of the equation that is the reason for these stores shutting down, along with it goes their cd department, which was why I loved the store to begin with. Nobody, not Best Buy, not Wal Mart, nobody has the selection of albums that A&B Sound does.
So many of these stereo stores only have the Top 40, new releases and a few selected older titles. And I guess much of that is due to them not selling like they used to.
Kids today, not all of them but a lot of them, don't play cds anymore. They play ipods, loaded with songs that they have downloaded. The idea of an album means nothing to them anymore.
My son said to me the other day "I love this band....whoever....I have over 50 songs by them" Not 'I have 5 of their albums', but '50 of their songs'.
Even my brother who was always a hardcore record buyer like myself, is talking about getting rid of his cds while they are worth something, because he's downloaded them all onto his ipod.

[jgkojak]

Music distribution in its old form is on its way out.

There is no longer a need (i.e. efficiency) for an artist to release a predetermined (in maximum number of minutes) number of tracks per cycle-- on the LP it was 38-45 minutes, on CD its of course 70+ minutes- ALBUMS.

I think artists will begin releasing "Sessions" - probably the same 10-15 songs that are customary for an "album" release, but without the need for distribution or traditional music marketing.

This also means that the occassional one-off single release that the Beatles and McCartney (Junior's Farm, Mull of Kintyre, Spies Like Us) kept alive.

I see CDs perhaps as a vehicle for Greatest Hits and catalog/box-set archival releases.

[james1985]

I still, and always will, buy em.

I just cant see why the majority of my generation have no desire for music in a physical form - harddrives don't last forever! I love looking at my shelves of CDs and remembering where and when I bought certain records - it's special and personal in a way that downloading (whether legally or illegally) can never be. I costs me more money, sure, but i still love that feeling of taking a CD home and listening to it for the first time, you know?

Ah, well.....

[Lazarus_2]

I just heard that the CD´s are not selling well, people buy one songs on the internet, and don´t want to buy whole albums.

SHAME

what CD's?