Are Music CDs Dying? Best Buy Stops Selling CDs (complex.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Complex magazine: The future of physical music isn't looking good. According to Billboard, consumer electronics company Best Buy will no longer carry physical CDs and Target may be following suit in the near future. Best Buy notified music suppliers that they will cease selling CDs at stores beginning July 1. The move is sure to hurt the already declining sales of CDs as consumers are switching to streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal in large numbers. CD sales have already dropped by a sizable 18.5 percent in the past year, Billboard reports.
Billboard also reports Target has given an "ultimatum" to music and video suppliers. "Currently, Target takes the inventory risk by agreeing to pay for any goods it is shipped within 60 days, and must pay to ship back unsold CDs for credit... Target has demanded to music suppliers that it wants CDs to be sold on what amounts to a consignment basis..."

"If the majors don't play ball and give in to the new sale terms, it could considerably hasten the phase down of the CD format."

Comments

Re:Last DRM free media

[Mr D from 63]

I just have no need to drive to a store to hope they have a CD I want and pay more for. I'll buy on-line. I don't need to hold it in my hand before purchasing. I'll buy on line.

But I tend to buy used CDs, rip and stash. So I'm only only indirect support for the new CD market.

Heh, not in Japan...

[theNetImp]

That really depends on where in the world you're talking about. It still thrives in Japan because people still want the psychical medial . We still have Tower Records here and CD rentals as well.

Its the content, stupid!

[Anne Thwacks]

The reason CD sales are declining is cos because most of the content is rubbish. People are not going to buy music, if, after listening to it once, they never want to hear it again. If you look at the comments on Youtube, the 50's and 60's music gets tons of comments saying "This is amazing - I which I had been around in those days" while the new stuff has loads of views but few comments.

Personally, I go to lots of live stuff instead of buying crap CDs that die quick.

Last perpetual license

[Solandri]

Unless something has changed recently, MP3 doesn't support DRM. In fact most of the audio sound formats I've encountered don't support DRM. It's not like the case with movies, where the "video file" format is actually a container containing a video file, audio file, subtitle files, chapter index, etc, and you can insert all sorts of funny ways and conditions to play it. Pretty much all the music audio file formats I've encountered are just straight audio files - compressed, but not encrypted.

The bigger loss is that CDs, being a physical format, carried with them a perpetual license. You could bequeath your CD collection to your children upon your death. The license agreement terms for most online music/movie purchase services grant you a non-transferable license. That is, your "ownership" of the content you've "purchased" expires upon your death. The only way to allow your heirs to inherit your music or movie or ebook or game collection is to break the EULA and share your login and password with them before you expire.

I expect this will be hashed out in court over the next 40 years, as the "loss" of a loved one's or relative's online media collection upon their death becomes more commonplace. People will challenge it, and the courts will have to decide if that's really how we want online "purchases" of copyrighted media to work. In the meantime, you can completely bypass the content industry's attempts to erode our ownership rights of things we've paid money for by purchasing CDs. (Or by pirating stuff - though "pirating" is probably not the right word when it's done to take back rights we should have had from the beginning.)