CD Sales Statistics - So what is wrong with the CD and other myths

The poor old CD is going to disappear soon; so we are told. They are going to be replaced by "digital" sales. But CDs store digital representations of music they are "digital" so are they going to replace themselves?

A CD is really only a means to store a digital file. A digital file can be held on a hard drive or a flash drive as well.  The digital music held on a CD is in CD Audio red book format; these files can easily be converted to WAV files with almost exactly the same format but stored on a Hard Drive, a Flash Drive, a DVD, an SD card or even a BluRay Disk.

The press perpetrates so many myths  and exaggerations about recorded music that I wonder if any form rationality remains.

The so called great vinyl revival has not really happened and LPs represent an almost insignificant proportion of the market. None of my friends who possess a record deck ever use it or buy records. I limit myself to buying LPs in second hand shops and all the music has been converted to digital files and ends up on a CD for playing in a car.


Our little silver friend is very versatile and a prerecorded CD maintains an almost indestructible copy of the music under every day conditions. This is more than can be said for LPs, audio cassettes and hard drives.

I have bought lots of albums from "download sites" in WAV, FLAC and MP3 format. All of this music has been backed up to CD. MP3 albums can be converted to CD audio for playing in the car.

I can envisage a time when the CD as a form of backup storage will disappear, especially when flash and cloud storage becomes cheaper. I rather like the idea of the CD, however, as I can read the sleeve notes.

I am surprised that music is not being sold in read only SD card format. It is light and easy to post or carry and could come along with a nicely prepared booklet for album information.

There are now claims that audio cassettes will make a big comeback. For me they never disappeared as I still play them in the car. I have digitised all of my audio cassettes which cannot be easily replaced by  pre-recorded CD for archive purposes.

Digital music will not disappear and the CD is just as much a member of the digital family as the download - journalists please take note.



http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/bpi-2012-figures-album-sales-fall-11-2-as-singles-hit-record-high/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18278037