The Rapid Rise (& Fall) of the CD

CDs and Record album sales will never go back to what it once was. Streaming will grow in popularity, but CD and vinyls will continue to be a niche hobby for many people.

@mapman Thought I was reading my own entries!

There is value to all the various means to playback music. I have turntable, reel to reel, two cassette players, cd transport, tuner. And I've held on to all my physical media,

Streaming became my primary choice for listening to music over time. Initially, it was the novelty of a new format with access to an incredible number of recordings. Over time the complexity was the allure, I was bored with digital playback via cd, tt setups have the complexity, but I was set at the time. With streaming one can have a simple setup  or extremely complex array of equipment, I've gone with the latter. As an audiophile I admit to  fascination with the equipment and diy aspect of my setups. My streaming setup very much custom, diy and complex, and still, and always will be in flux. And then we have the music, my streaming setup provides me with hours of best sound quality I've experienced, this with decades of audio experiences. Streaming listening sessions can be stream of consciousness experience, no physical media can replicate it with all the getting up and changing out cd's and vinyl. This stream of consciousness mode of listening has completely changed my level of engagement with the music, five, six hour listening sessions pass by so fast, believe it to be 11pm, clock says 2,3am, time to go to bed, sigh.

Who cares about the future. All we have is now. Enjoy whatever format you prefer while you’ve got ‘em! I won’t be giving up my vinyl or cd’s!

5 years ago, when I thought I'd try streaming, 90% of my listening was on vinyl, 10% was CD.

Now it's 85% streaming, 10% vinyl and 5% CD.

Like many have stated, convenience and the vast library have made streaming the go-to for much of my listening.

But, I wouldn't consider selling any of my vinyl or CD's because they were curated by me over the last 55 years, and they represent much of my favorite works. Streaming is cheap and convenient now, but the future is unknown. Perhaps it will become prohibitively expensive for me in my retirement years if the pricing structure changes. Maybe as I downsize and move to a smaller home I won't have access to the gigabyte, fiber internet that I enjoy now. All I know is that if I suddenly had to do without streaming it would not be that big a deal since I have backup sources. Without vinyl and CD backup sources I'd be up shits Creek if my streaming went away. 

 Do you own or rent your house (or whatever you live in)? Streaming is in effect 'renting' the music, and the cost never ends, and will surely increase. I have a fairly large collection of both vinyl and CDs, but just bought an entry level streamer this week because of the wide variety of music it brings. As several others have said in this thread, it's all good as long as we are happy listening to the music.