Best Buy to stop selling CD's, possibly Target as well...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/best-buy-to-stop-selling-music-cds/

I have completely quit looking for any new cds at any of the big box stores (Target, Best Buy, Walmart, etc.) even when they do have cds they sure as heck don't have what I'm looking for.  I have to buy any cds I wan't online now.

Occassionally I will buy a $5 CD from Walmart. They don't have the bins anymore but do have them in with the regular CD's. I'll find a gem in there sometimes. Saw Joe Satriani's "Surfing With The Alien" for $5. Didn't get it. Went back the next day and couldn't find it.

This is the death throws of CDs.  Oh, you will still get them from specialty labels and such, but it won't be long until the major labels stop printing them.  People, for the most part, don't buy them.  They will become a niche market much like Vinyl.

One of the problems is that CD's are a 35 year old technology that are woefully out of date.  The CD you purchase today is no different than the one you purchased in the mid-eighties when they first came out and were 'state of the art'.

Why has not anyone thought of manufacturing an 'upgraded' CD that might not only have improved sound quality but is capable of storing up to 2 to 3 hours of music (as opposed to the 80 minutes on a current CD)?  At the same time, make this upgraded CD capable of playing on all current CD players (home, car, portable) so that you do not have to upgrade or wait for your favorite albums to be re-released on the new format.

Then again, in this current age of downloaded music and/or streaming, a new form of physical media more than likely would struggle to find its own niche.

Dynamis wrote:

Why has not anyone thought of manufacturing an 'upgraded' CD that might not only have improved sound quality but is capable of storing up to 2 to 3 hours of music (as opposed to the 80 minutes on a current CD)?  At the same time, make this upgraded CD capable of playing on all current CD players (home, car, portable) so that you do not have to upgrade or wait for your favorite albums to be re-released on the new format.

Then again, in this current age of downloaded music and/or streaming, a new form of physical media more than likely would struggle to find its own niche.

I think what you're looking for is called "DVD-ROM". Over 30 hours of uncompressed music. However, it's not going to play in existing players. The player and the media are too closely coupled. Update one and you have to update the other.

That said, physical media are on the way out. I like to buy all my music on physical media, so I can rip (and re-rip) at whatever fidelity I choose, and get the album art and notes, but I recognize that I'm in the minority. Heck, people actually buying music these days are probably the minority.

Quote :

Heck, people actually buying music these days are probably the minority.

Ding!  Ding!  Ding!

People don't buy music anymore.  Ask most everyone and they will tell you that they just stream it on their phones.  They don't even pay for the monthly subscription and just deal with ads.  And, because artists make almost nothing off of streaming, that makes the artist have to charge even higher ticket prices to make the same level of money they did even 10 years ago.

Physical media is on its death bed.  It's sad, but it is true.