Goodbye CD's

ironically, borders is taking a different approach with music, as opposed to their strategy with books. when tower closed they didn't seize the opportunity to position themselves as 'the' destination retailer for catalogue music. they decided instead to follow the bath of best buy and target, which anyone knows, won't attract any halfway serious music buyer with some time and money on a regular basis. it may be they have a distain for the industry, or perhaps they don't believe in music like they do in the written word.

No computer based system sounds better then my AA Capitole yet. Plus, I have five six-foot tall by three-foot wide bookcases filled with cd's.

Simply, when would I have the time to burn 100 sq.ft. of cd's? And, if I did have the time, I would be doing something else.

Jaybo...that is an interesting thing..After I heard that Borders was taking this action, my very first thought was "well...they are a book store afterall".

Imin2u-

Interesting...I watched a buddy "burn" a few cd's on his system...I was so intimidated and lost interest pretty quick. I too would rather stick in a disc, than take all the time and fiddle with my computer and HD...besides, I too think the CD sounds darn good from a high Quality machine, like yours.

I'm sorry to see Borders selection diminishing! In retrospect, I've probably contributed to the problem. Of the approximately 180 CD's I bought last year, only about 30 of them were from Borders. I'm sure there are lots of folks like me who predominantly purchase music CD's through online channels, often directly from artists themselves. I'm sure that's the main issue for Borders, not so much the emerging market for downloads (dominated by iTunes).

Regarding downloads, I don't think Borders ever had the youth market. The kids never seemed to buy their CD's at Borders where I live, they were buying them at the mall CD stores. Most of the teens in my life have iPods full of downloads, and haven't bought a CD in years. So the cutback is more likely to be a response to loss of business among traditional Borders customers, rather than new customers they never had.

Not that I'm representative, but I know I'm buying more music than ever. So far, electronic music storage hasn't reduced my purchasing of CD's. After a Christmas bonus, I invested in a ModWright Transporter, and my music listening has been accelerated! It's the best digital I've heard in my system, and I've had some fairly high-end CD players from Resolution Audio, Musical Fidelity, McIntosh, and Lector. It's been an encouragement to me to buy even more CD's, whereas the majority of my listening used to be vinyl. Not that my case is typical: how many people are only now discovering CD's can be high quality, like me? Talk about the tail of the curve!.

Anyway, IMHO High res digital downloads are still just a wish, for the most part--at least I haven't found much music to buy that I want. Also, despite having ripped over 1,000 CD's to hard disk, I still like to have the insurance of the CD as an archival medium. I'd love to see my favorite music via high-res downloads, but I still like to have the CD too. Maybe I just don't want to believe that people can really live with MP3 quality for all their music??

A long-winded way of saying I think it's the internet CD business, not electronic downloads that's killing the Borders business.

Not for me...

Vinyl, CD's and cassettes all have great sound and the joy of owning a PHYSICAL PIECE OF PROPERTY! Nothing wrong with downloads but the day will come when your hard drive becomes corrupted and crashes and/or your flash drive too becomes corrupted and all that music you (report-ably) bought will be lost. Now of course you can make hd backups but who's to say the backup wont fail especially if left sitting unused for the most part.

Something about having piece of carbonate plastic (for CD) beautiful 12 inch black disc (for vinyl) and the simple hand held magnetic tape (for cassette). Yes, these formats can all suffer through age but if properly stored especially vinyl and then CD and even a nicely stored and occasionally exercised cassette can last a lifetime if not longer. I even have CDR's that are over 10 years old and still play perfectly, vinyl can last forever and I have some cassettes that are over 20 years old that still play well even if not stored perfectly.

Downloaded music may become unplayable with a future operating system or for whatever reason.

I'm not against HD music and even portable MP3 players etc. but I will not ONLY trust my music to these. There is something also about paying for something you have no physical copy of that I don't like. Yes I can have a CD go bad or and LP and cassette but not my whole library at once. HD downloads are fine and can sound great but WHAT IF!?!?!