Are we, and have we for some time, been in the era of throwaway CD players?

[RobHolt]

I think the mass market has had throw-away CD players for some time but not so at the high end.

CD will be around for some years yet I think though it is clearly declining.
For audiophiles the big issue will be the quality of downloaded material. At the moment you just cannot get a wide enough catalogue in lossless formats.
The fact that CD is a lossless medium will I suspect make it quite collectable in the way that many of us collect vinyl for many years to come.

It's great that companies like Linn are offering 24 bit downloads but we need these from Virgin, EMI, Sony etc.