How long have we got?

[57charles]

CD's will survive just as long as there's a supply in charity shops. When and if that source of supply dries up then they will be limited to specialist labels at the very most.

[Jac Hawk]

interesting to read what everyone thinks will happen

[Pieoftheday]

CD's will survive just as long as there's a supply in charity shops. When and if that source of supply dries up then they will be limited to specialist labels at the very most.

Surely the charity shop ones are pre owned? And don't affect new sales ?so have no effect on whether cd's survive?

[Macca]

Depends what you mean by survive. Survive as in still they stop making them or survive as in until the very last one goes to landfill?

[Pigmy Pony]

In recent years car boot sales have been an excellent source of CD's, sometimes 50p or less, so I can afford to try out unfamiliar stuff. This last year though, this seems to have tailed off a bit.

I don't see vinyl ever being more than a niche product, so I reckon access to all available new titles will be through streaming and downloads only. Personally I'm not bothered, I'll just stick with the hard copies I've already got, and subscribe to a streaming service. Tidal looks favourite at the mo, but who knows which it'll be when I get round to it.

[Macca]

You can still buy 78s from various places but that's got to be classified as dead as a medium. Compact cassette too. And reel to reel (The Tape Project notwithstanding). It's the coolest source ever but it's dead lads. Get over it and enjoy it, but it's never coming back. Same as 8 Track, minidisc, laserdisc and VHS. Betamax. Elcassette. DVD-A. Even DVD is on the way out, 5 more years tops I think.


In fact when you think about it there's more dead formats than you realise. But CD has outlived all of them so far.

[Manicatel]

Streaming for convenience & searching for new music.
LP’s for when there’s something that I want to just sit down & listen to, without constantly chopping, changing & fiddling about.
CD’s are the big loser. They will only survive for people with big cd collections, who don’t want to get into streaming. The amount of new CD players on the market has shrunk. As an example, Naim has only one player in their range, & that is at the lower end of their spectrum.

[Minstrel SE]

CD is definately on the way out as most younger people I know are just interested in phones, portable extension speakers and Spotify.

I still see a market for the silver disc or maybe thats because I have a soft spot for them

Im quite sad to see it dying away. Its not that they are hated....just being passed over for instant gratification and convenient ways to hear music. They want it now and you cant blame them for that

Vinyl will only ever be niche again. extremely niche.......its nice to talk about a vinyl revival but its a heavily capped revival as the vast majority wont ever bother with it.

Im slow on the uptake as it took me years to even use a contactless card. However Im beginning to see the joys of a vast library of readily available music. Ive been using i tunes on a limited basis but I can see that Spotify etc are very handy to get to the end result of listening to music.

[Clive197]

The King is dead, long live the king.

A lot of the music I buy is on cd, secondhand, which then gets ripped to a NAS. I much prefer a secondhand cd to a secondhand LP because condition is greatly important to me. I’m discovering a lot of music that went over my head in the sixties and seventies.

Many wrote off vinyl, they were wrong. A lot of people are now writing off cd, they are wrong. Physical media will always be the go-to for millions. Even radio still survives (just).

Reports of vinyl and cd’s death has been greatly exaggerated.

[Gaz]

Let me start by qualifying my following statement, I have never listened to a good quality vinyl or streaming based system, my last vinyl system was a Garrard SP25 through a NAD 3020i and Wilmslow Audio home made speakers. For streaming I listen to Spotify on a Galaxy S6 through my amp using a 3.5mm to RCA lead

In my experience I prefer CD to both vinyl & streamed music, to me vinyl does have a certain warmth but lacks clarity and streamed music just sounds dull almost as though a blanket has been put over the speakers.

I am planning to give vinyl another go (see my thread in the analogue section) and may in future invest in a decent digital source and/or DAC for streaming but for now it's CDs all the way for me