(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)
The numbers are grim, all right, but the music industry still sells hundreds of millions of CDs each year. That's a lot of discs, and sales of downloads won't surpass silver discs for a while.
According to some industry sources, as recently as 2006, CDs represented more than 80 percent of the music sold in the United States. A recent report projects that it won't be until 2012 that download sales surpass CD sales. So fess up. A lot of you are still buying discs, and I want to know who you are.
I'm doing more than my share, still averaging six or seven CDs a month (vs. less than one DVD/Blu-ray Disc a month). The media sees trends, so even though the trend is down, CDs are not out. Oh, and there's a lot more profit in selling physical media than downloads, so the record business is in no hurry to quit making discs.
Not that it matters to most people, but CDs sound better than most downloads, including ones free of digital rights management (DRM), or copyright protection software.
Got an iPod? Rip your CDs to Apple Lossless or WAV files, and get way better sound than iTunes downloads. Buy used CDs, and save even more money.
CDs can have gorgeous cover art and liner notes, which aren't always part of the download deal. Yeah, I've heard the news that LP sales doubled in 2008, but their sum still equals the teeniest fraction CD sales.
I'd love to hear from folks who regularly buy CDs.
- prev
- 1
- next
