The Rapid Rise (& Fall) of the CD

... and CD’s are gaining in popularity again, there are a good many YouTube vids about this; sales are increasing and there are more CD players and CD transports hitting the market along with it....

Oh, there are YouTube videos so it must be true. 🙄 Some perspective: CD shipments had a relatively tiny blip up since Covid but are still down 96% from where they were at their peak around 25 years ago. US shipments peaked at 943 million in 2000, hit a low of 32 million in 2020 and had a brief bounce to 47 million in 2021 but have since steadily declined back to 37 million in 2023. Hardly a resurgence, and in the investment world we call that a dead cat bounce. CDs will continue to decline from here and are the modern digital iteration of the buggy whip, and any talk about an increase in its popularity is just silly talk and wishful thinking.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/186772/album-shipments-in-the-us-music-industry-since-1999/

https://djmag.com/news/gen-z-listen-more-vinyl-cds-and-cassettes-any-other-age-group-survey-shows

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billrosenblatt/2023/01/16/luminate-data-music-report-the-album-is-once-again-a-vinyl-lp/

An excerpt from the Forbes article

"Vinyl buyers are also likely to be Gen Z. The born-digital generation, now teenagers and young adults, is 27% more likely to purchase vinyl than the average listener; yet it’s also much more likely to discover new music on short online video clips. That is, Gen Zers are likely to watch short clips of music on TikTok and then purchase the music they like on vinyl. And they spend more than twice as much as the average consumer on music"

I'm 57,  I was afraid they would stop making quality players.  I have a lot of CDs, 3 or 4 hundred at least.  Most I like all the way through... 

Two weeks ago I bought a new transport and my CDs have never sounded so good.   I have purchased about 6 CDs since for $3 to $6 , all favorites that I want to own.   

I love my Aurender but it's not quite as good as my transport with 44.1k material.  I think a lot of what is available on streaming is just a sample rate converted version of the original.  It varies so widely between platforms and tracks ...   CD playback is a constant. It's always direct from the disc or buffered like the PS Audio units .   

I'm going to keep grabbing my favorite discs while they are plentiful and cheap. 

Why arguing about what old farts and younger generations like. Big deal, everybody is different and that's a good thing. From 78s to streaming it has always been about the music. Arguing about how to play it is fruitless, to each his own. I do a little bit of each: Vinyl, CD, DVD/ YouTube for concerts on my TV and streaming Qobuz, Tidal and Amazon music for the majority of my listening. All running through my main system in the house of stereo. I sure as heck wouldn't bad mouth any of them. Why limiting yourself to one over the other, they all offer different experiences. Ending each post with happy listening makes you think that blogger would stand by it. 

@2psyop  Well. I'm an older person who was also around when CD was first introduced.  At the time, I was running two turntables, reel to reel, and a cassette tape player.  Later on, I added a CD player to the mix.  Now a days, I stream exclusively.  As I said, CD and vinyl are still around, and I imagine that they'll always be around to some extent.  If you attend any high end audio show from here to Kalamazoo, you'll see turn tables spinning vinyl records in just about every room.  However, when you look around that room, you'll see practically nobody but middle age older people salivating over the old physical media (and that incudes the people running the room).  That's the reality.  Also, I come in contact with lots of younger people through family and friends, and not one of them listen to their music via a CD player, let alone a turn table.  That's the real reality of the situation.  My point being, neither CD or vinyl is the future.  At least not with the young, who are the future.  Happy listening.