[Libloather]

I still have some unopened VHS tapes.

[Huck]

I still don’t get what the record companies have to complain about. They can now put out sub-standard audio quality and no one cares. They have an inventory of infinity, with no physical product to worry about. What’s not to like?

[A_Tradition_Continues]

Does this mean I should start looking to replace my 8 Tracks?

[GeronL]

yep, but they will be around for a long time after that.

[HHFi]

I still buy tons of CDs, but mostly independent releases, and almost nothing from major labels other than archive stuff. Most new music on major labels is garbage from cretins whose only talent is for marketing and self-promotion (just look at yesterday’s Grammy nominees, only about four people worth listening to in the bunch). Downloading is for people who are too dumb, young or tonedeaf to care about sound quality. Maybe if they’d ever heard anything worth listening to, they’d start demanding to hear it clearly. /rant

[KMG365]

A friend of mine that works at Best Buy said they are going to greatly reduce the number of CD’s and DVD’s they sell in their stores after Christmas(literally down to one rack). Seems they take up too much floor space given the way the inventory turns and the margins they make on them.

[Beagle8U]

I tried to get a copy of an older (1980) movie the other day and can't find one. Only thing out there was a used VHS tape and they wanted $30.

I guess it might be worthwhile to hang onto the classics on VHS.

[End Times Sentinel]

So, I was tailgating a football game with a buddy of mine who's just an incredible Luddite. He's playing music and I ask him who the artist is.

“Oh, I'll make you a CD of his stuff, it's really great... I've got to remember to do that, I'll bring it next week... it's a home game next week, right?...”

I pulled out my iphone, ran sound hound, identified it and downloaded it in the time it took him to settle on a way to get a CD to me.

I don't think I have anything to play a CD on anyways.

[luvbach1]

Will books be next? I love the bracing smell of paper and ink and the feel of the crisp pages a real book.

[brownsfan]

I’m not old, but I’m not a kid.

I understand the cloud, and digital formats, and digital only music. I reject it. If I can’t buy music on a physical media, I won’t buy music.

I think there are more than a few like me.

Any wonder the RIAA is in such a state?

[EscapedDutch]

Maybe it was the end of CDs the Mayans foretold us about?

[reagan_fanatic]

We still have a beta head cleaner and boxes of 3-1/2” floppies in sealed packages where I work.

[Jack Hydrazine]

What do I do with all my 8” floppy disks?

[Southern Magnolia]

Sad. I remember when the compact disc was amazing new technology. Didn’t get a cd boombox until ‘89. I don’t like the “instant obsoleteness” we’ve gotten into.

I still buy cds, but if manufacturers are too stupid to realize that it’s the lack of quality and the price of the darn things...well, it just means a whole lot of music will become very, very affordable.

I’m really worried how this will affect our local “retro” record store. The guy sells new cds and lps in addition to vintage collectibles and he’s already in financial trouble.

We buy “new to me” movies on VHS for a quarter at the used bookstores. Hours of entertainment for my husband and I.

[discostu]

Actually CD will probably stick around more for the small guys than the big guys. Touring bar bands make most of their money on the merch table, and item #1 on the merch table is CDs.

[dfwgator]

I’m surprised with greater memory capabilities, that there isn’t a digital format that can have the same sound quality as analog by now.

[Revolting cat!]

BS

[SamAdams76]

When you think about it, you realize how absurd it is in the digital age for record companies to be still marketing music on physical media in the first place.

With compact discs, you have the expenses of manufacture, packaging, distributing and retailing. Not to mention "shrinkage" due to theft and the expense of taking returns for unsold CDs.

Compare all of that to the distribution of digital media over the Internet. You have unlimited supply with nearly zero cost of inventory. Whether you sell one copy or ten million copies of a particular song, it takes up only a tiny amount of space on your servers.

Consider that 20 years ago - the heyday of the CD - the largest superstores like Tower Records are Virgin could still only stock a fraction of all the recorded music that was available. I remember shopping for compact discs at the Tower Records on Mass Ave in Boston. It had three floors of product. Yet I often went in there and came out empty-handed because the music I was looking for wasn't in stock. They carried plenty of Michael Bolton and Madonna CDs however.

Nowadays, you have online "record stores" like Amazon and iTunes that have tens of millions of recordings to choose from. What's not to like about that? In order to cram that much inventory into a record store, the record store would have to be larger than the Pentagon building.

Music snobs love to complain about the low quality of digital files and that may have been true in the early days when most online tracks were DRM-infested 128 kps offerings. But now the standard is unprotected 256 kps files. One you get to 256 kps, you would need really expensive headphones (and excellent hearing) to tell the difference from an uncompressed audio file.

I recently signed up for the iTunes music match and now have my 18,000+ tracks in the Cloud. I no longer need to worry about backing up my music library because if I lose my hard drive, I can simply download them all over again - only this time, for free. Best of all, I was able to replace all my 128 kps files with brand new 256 kps files with no DRM.

I feel that cloud-based music will be the final nail in the coffin of not only compact disks, but any physical media to store music (other than your computer hard drive).