How long have CD’s got left?

Everywhere you look you see signs that the music industry has moved well beyond the humble CD. These days it seems music consumption and sales are all about downloads and streaming – with new streaming platforms from big hitters like Apple, Twitter and Google expected to join established players like Spotify in killing CDs completely. But how long will it be until CDs well and truly vanish?

First of all, the below graph from Digital Music News suggests that digital sales still have some way to go to catch up with the total CD sales since 2004 (when counting began):

cd-sales1

However, this graph from the same publication shows just how sharply CD sales are expected to drop off in the coming years:

cd-sales2

Pretty brutal, really. But lets be honest – who’s actually buying new CD players anymore? I haven’t even thought about buying a new player for about 10 years. But wireless speakers and streaming devices, they’re all the rage!

According to Digital Music News, CD’s will be completely absent from our lives by 2022. Which is backed up by a recent study from PriceWaterhouseCooper, who reckon physical music sales will be down by 13% by 2017 – but overall music sales (also counting digital sales and concert revenue) will grow y 1% each year in that time. So basically, CD’s are rapidly being superseded in the music industry by the ‘disruptive’ streaming technologies.

cd-sales3

That’s progress for you I guess, and if you don’t want to be left behind you might want to jump on the bandwagon and sell CDs online.

What do you think of the decline of CD’s? Will you miss them or are you happy to embrace the new world order of streaming music on demand? Let me know your thoughts in the comments…

Post Author: Harvey Dyer

1 thought on “How long have CD’s got left?

    Show Appeal Realty

    (2013-08-29 - 7:59 pm)

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