Rumors of CD Demise Exagerated? New Hegel

Recorded music has only been around for about 120 years and each of these was the dominant format at one time or another: 78s, LPs & 45s, cassettes, CDs, downloadable digital files, digital streams. Reel to reel tape and Hi8 digital tape were also niche audiophile formats at one time. In the past couple of decades, when downloads of individual songs became available and artists and consumers began moaning, I had to remind them that for pop music "singles," ie 45s, were the dominant format for buying music before LPs rose in popularity. As a teen in the 60s and 70s, one went to the record store to chat up the staff and buy your music one song at a time. My sister and I had to save our allowance to buy "Meet the Beatles," our first LP. The one advantage to being old is recognizing that trends just put on new outfits and emerge again.

“Streaming tends to be a "Bounce around" affair ”
That sounds like a user issue than the medium…lol. I have over 100 playlists in Qobuz that renders hours of nonstop listening. If you don’t like a song, skip and cue to next. For $12.99 a month, I love having access to music library that I can never imagine hoarding on any physical media. 

Lalitk I agree with you. If I don’t have collections of SACDs   Xrcd s, HDCds , and redbook audiophile cd, Streaming will be perfect. I have good vynil selections as well. So Iam happy for what I have,Iam glad streaming is onother options every audiophile can have nowadays.

Streaming tends to be a "Bounce around" affair with listening to a half song of this and a half song of another artist and 15 seconds of another artist

I frequently read this argument against streaming in forums and even in the audiophile magazines. All you have to do when streaming is select an album from your phone or tablet then set your device down, somewhere you can’t see it if necessary, and listen to the entire album.

If you can’t listen to an entire streamed album on your system, you can improve your system so that you can listen to a full album at no greater cost than with any other format.

My CD beats streaming.