How soon until CD's are obsolete?

[Quadruple OG]

With record sales going down each year, and with more big record labels showing more and more concern, how far is the music industry from just releasing all music digitally first?

[big mat]

i hope not, i dont listen to music and a fuckin pc, i got daytona rides sound case with a complete nad system that can't play anything that is not on a physical support like a cd or a dvd, unless i plug my ipod on the auxilliary but that sucks

[Layeth THe Smacketh Down]

This will never happen because everyone doesnt have access to computers or digital music.  Releasing music only through digital outlets cuts off a large part of the music buying public.

[StevenQBosell]

honestly I believe in less than 20 years CDs will go the way of cassettes... SOME people may still have them, but 75% of the public will probably shift to a hard drive / flash drive medium for damn everything, including films

[Oklin]

honestly I believe in less than 20 years CDs will go the way of cassettes... SOME people may still have them, but 75% of the public will probably shift to a hard drive / flash drive medium for damn everything, including films

Yeah I agree.. Vinyl will NEVER die though!!

[Corona and Porn]

honestly I believe in less than 20 years CDs will go the way of cassettes... SOME people may still have them, but 75% of the public will probably shift to a hard drive / flash drive medium for damn everything, including films

Yeah I agree.. Vinyl will NEVER die though!!

it'll just be in a vegetative state for the rest of time, nobody fucks with that shit except for hip hop dj's

[Al Bundy]

It's slowly decreasing as people are buying individual songs off of iTunes and the such. I personally don't buy songs off of the net because they're usually not in CD quality and the artist is not getting shit.

[Makaveli's Food & Liquor]

honestly I believe in less than 20 years CDs will go the way of cassettes... SOME people may still have them, but 75% of the public will probably shift to a hard drive / flash drive medium for damn everything, including films

Exactly wot he said, eventually tho nobody will buy albums if CDs are rare because y the fuck wud u pay like 8 quid for the album offa itunes, when u don't get the case, booklet instead just a lock on the songs which stops u from playing them on another computer....

[Narrator]

CDs are already obsolete now, IMO.  Five years ago, I remember I could go into FYE or Best Buy when there was a really popular album out and it would be sold out.  Nowadays, they always order ridiculous numbers of copies, but then they're all just sitting on the shelves even during holiday season.  Actually, sometimes part of the reason artists get certified Gold or Plat these days is when the stores buy lots and lots of CD copies of their albums, regardless of whether or not the public buys them (remember, you certified for SHIPPING to stores, not SELLING directly to the public necesarily).

It's slowly decreasing as people are buying individual songs off of iTunes and the such. I personally don't buy songs off of the net because they're usually not in CD quality and the artist is not getting shit.

You think artists get shit now even from CD sales?  And no, AAC is pretty much indistinguishable from CD quality, if you use iTunes.

[3331]

i dont see cd's being completely obsolete unless some other format you can buy from a store is made but i can see they sales going down quite a bit over time.

[T-Dogg]

I don't see all music being distributed digitally. 'Cause whenever you buy some off the net, it's of inferior quality. CD Quality music would take up too much bandwidth. It's only feasible when household internet speeds are greatly increased, and that'll take many many years.

Another physical medium that replaces CD's might come along, but atleast I'm not aware of any new disc trying to take CD's place in music storage. The MiniDisc tried, but didn't become popular. (Might be 'cause only a few albums were available on MiniDisc, most you had to record yourself.)

[KURUPTION-81]

what are the actual figures of cd sales ? i know hip hop sales are down because of bootlegging and downloading but what about overall ?

[Al Bundy]

It's slowly decreasing as people are buying individual songs off of iTunes and the such. I personally don't buy songs off of the net because they're usually not in CD quality and the artist is not getting shit.

You think artists get shit now even from CD sales?  And no, AAC is pretty much indistinguishable from CD quality, if you use iTunes.

They're getting more then whatever they worked out for the iTunes download.

and AAC is not indistinguishable from CDQ. IIRC (I could be wrong) the select catalogue on iTunes that is in higher quality is 256 KPBs which is a big step above the 128 KPBs DRM-ridden files but I can tell the difference between a lossless file and a compressed file.

[devil_may_care]

LAME MP3 is indistinguishable from CDQ, if you have a good ripper and around 192 VBR

[big mat]

even the 320 kpbit mp3s dont have the sound quality of cdq, only format who as the same are flac files, and it's like half the size of a wave file