The end of physical media is neigh

The end isn't near. LG was never selling many players to begin with. Most sales went to Panasonic and Sony. Those are still the top decently priced ones to get and they still sell plenty. I'm surprised LG didn't make this move sooner tbh. 

Yes. A paid download can be stored on your HD and copied, moved, and backed up however you wish. You own the file.

@cleeds  Thanks.  That’s what I would’ve thought but wasn’t sure.  It makes total sense. 

There are a ton of 8 track players for sale on ebay, so CD and blu-ray players should be available for as long as you'll be around.  You probably have more CDs, etc. than you could listen to in your remaining lifetime, why worry?

Hogwash. There are and will almost certainly be used cds and stores to sell them. Every time I go to the music store I see plenty of people buying physical media of all sorts. Mostly LPs but cds too. My Oppo UDP-205 player still works great (just used it tonight) and I imagine it will for a lot longer. 

In around 2002 I started streaming. I also burnt the songs I purchased on CDs. Eventually the CDs stopped playing. I went back to CDs and vinyl and never looked back/ never missed streaming. (Unless we call watching youtube streaming)