The demise of the music CD inevitable?

I've read the above posts with some interest and offer these personal comments/opinions in no particular order.
1. CD "rot" might be due to mishandling or poor storage.  I still own a number of original CDs from 1984 and they all still look and play perfectly.
2. I have taken all my CDs and ripped them to (lossless) FLAC format.  I've placed all of them on a USB hard drive that is plugged into the back of my Oppo disc player.  All my music is readily available with a few clicks and scrolls.  I'll keep the CDs safe and well stored just in case.
3.  As a related issue, I can buy used CDs in bulk (Craigslist) for as little as fifty cents each.  Some are of no interest to me and some are scratched and I don't want to keep them.  Those I keep are ripped to FLAC...others go to Goodwill.  I have more music than I really will ever need.
4. If I stumble onto an artist or album I want, I will buy it new...usually they are cheap.
5. Younger generations love their music but to them it is all about portability.  They really care less about lossless or high-rez...as long as their MP3s sound OK.  This may be a factor in the market failure of SACD and DVD-Audio.
6. I have many hundreds of CDs and about 30 SACDs.  On my roughly $15K Emotiva/B&W system I don't think I can tell the difference between them.
7.  High-rez audio files are better and have more data.  Yet I doubt most people could tell the difference.
8.  I was raised on vinyl.  I switched to CDs when they arrived on the market.  I'd never go back to vinyl.  I mean, really, even if they do sound a little bit better, I'd never go back to the hassle of turntables, cartridges, cuing, snaps and pops, wow and flutter and......cuing a tone arm and flipping LPs.  Really!!
9. Here is an axiom I've always believed in.  Market an audio product, price it really high and get the word out that it is "high-end" and sounds better.  It won't sell.  Triple or quadruple the price (making it a lesser value) and brain dead audiopholes will buy it.  And, believe this, you spend enough on an audio component or accessory....it WILL sound better to you.

Generally I agree with most of the above post, but I did dip my toes into the hi-rez waters with disappointing results. Yes, I get why so many people love vinyl, and I’ve never actually parted with my rather extensive vinyl collection, but I’m still a CD guy at heart. As to item #9, I’m not sure a discerning listener would be taken in by that sort of hype, but it IS a great argument for blind taste-testing. I once heard a very expensive tube-based system that really didn’t float my boat even though I could clearly hear what so many people found attractive about it.
To that extent, I guess, it’s really down to one’s own taste. By very high-end standards, my own system is quite modest but I’ve chosen carefully and right now I’m very pleased with what I’m hearing. This is not to say that there won’t be some future tweaks/upgrades, but for the moment I’m happy. There are places on the price spectrum I just won’t go whether or not I could actually afford them.

Perhaps this post of mine just reiterates what I have already stated. Nevertheless, for those with CDs 30 years with no sign (as least as you are able to tell) of ROT, keep in mind year 31 could be very different. Granted, nothing last forever.

Regardless, their demise is inevitable for a number of reasons. (My list is with respect to retaining the source flac file on hard disk and playing back directly from their or USB through an audiphile grade DAC). No particular order.
- Cost
- Physical space
- Greater concern for lack of data preservation
- Current CDs can be ripped to disk, relegating the CD to a "backup"
- Redbook standard is limited to 16 bit PCM

I have hundreds of CDs purchased new from 1986 to 1989 (I know because I made a big list in 1990) and with a rare exception they all play and sound just fine. I don’t know where the data or experiments on this idea that CDs wear out is coming from. Maybe if you leave them in a hot car they will have issues, but otherwise they seem to last just fine.
(The slogan back then: perfect sound forever. Has anyone had many of their old discs fail?)

As for streaming, the problem is far-too-often a track is a non-original strange re-recording because of a copyright issue. Even worse, it’s often not even flagged as being non-original. This is extremely annoying and frustrating if you like popular music from the last several decades.
Tidal, Spotify, Itunes, they all have this problem.

To get these originals onto your own storage, you have to buy a disc and rip it yourself. Until these legal restrictions go away, discs are the only way to go. And I sure don’t want to listen to Youtube or MP3 or other lossy versions with no decent resolution.

And ripping SACDs is basically impossible. And to my ears, SACD is still king, breathtaking and irreplaceable, especially through headphones. [It's a crime the Beatles were never released in SACD, but that's another subject.]