While CDs still accounted for 90 percent of music purchases last year, digital downloads grew by 20 percent, reaching a trade value of about $2 billion.
Push your finger through the hole in the center of a CD and stare at the reflective side. You’ll see yourself looking much older than you did when CDs came out in 1982. You’ll see a splash of color, a weak piece of plastic and a medium that seems doomed for extinction.
It’s nothing new. Over the course of 120 years, we’ve seen phonograph records shaped like tubes, 8-track tapes, records and spooled-up cassettes.
But the death of CDs seems like something different. We’re not just changing out one type of plastic for another. We’re losing something we can pick up in our hands.
”I strongly believe that there’s always going to be a need for people to go out and touch things,” says David Sax, a licensee of CD Warehouse in West Palm Beach, “whether it be clothes, or in our case, CDs. [But] successful CD stores need to retool.”
RELATED NEWS AND “HOW TO” GUIDES:
Forget Russia and China, is Mexico the world’s leader in piracy?
Help Wanted: “Looking for someone to spy on file-sharers – inquire within”
uTorrent version 1.6.1 build 488 STABLE is released
Watch out BitTorrent Inc., Azureus adds new content partner
OscarTorrents — new BitTorrent tracker site has all this years nominess
BitTorrent torrent sites & search engines
uTorrent – A Beginner’s guide to BitTorrent downloading
Watch The Simpsons, The Office, Jackass, South Park, Lost, X-Men, and More On-Demand For Free
SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”
