Is the CD dead? Let’s take a look.

If you go back to today’s Random Music News, you’ll see that CD sales have taken another huge dump, dropping more than 30% from this point next year.

So here’s the question: Is the CD dead? This is from Audiophile Review.

Pundits would have everyone hopefully believe the compact disc, affectionately known since 1982 as the “CD,” is destined to become a memory of how music used to be. It will ultimately and unceremoniously become relegated to the same place as the 8-track tape – wherever that may be. If recent developments in two of the nation’s largest retailers yields any clue, one certainly must wonder.

I’ll admit when I read both Target and Best Buy, once bastions of CD sales, will discontinue selling them, I could not help but imagine if this was the beginning of the end of “perfect sound forever.” Will it come to pass that “forever” only lasted slightly north of thirty years?

I was recently paying for some new music at what is one of the remaining few, and perhaps best known brick and mortar stores in Charlotte to purchase music – Manifest Discs. I was asking the manager how business was doing and the reply, not surprisingly, was “not too bad.” When I inquired further, he did admit sales of new CD’s were mostly stagnant, used CD’s were robust but not especially growing, and the only real growth was in LP’s, both new and used. Is this a microcosm of what is occurring across the US? Are sales of physical, hold in your hands CD’s declining – replaced by the popular and ever growing practice of streaming? Probably so.

Keep reading.