Are CD players dead

The original post was: "Are CD players dead"?

Dying.

What HiFi reports that UK record player sales(!) exceeded sales of CD players as of July 2010.

http://www.whathifi.com/blog/vinyl-turns-the-tables-as-decks-outsell-cd-players-3d-makes-a-slow-start-receivers-rule-2010-uk-ce-sales-revealed

The current thread has focused on music formats more than actual CD players. CD sales still exceed downloads by a large amount.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uPgbxW1-MQo/TWEgQlMz84I/AAAAAAAAASM/IBghiPFrEg0/s1600/albumsales2010.jpg

The dirty not-so-secret that the music industry doesn't know how to deal with is that sales of all formats are plummeting. Does this mean that people are buying and listening to less music as a whole? Maybe. My kids are as likely to watch videos (movies, YouTube, TV shows) on their iPhones and laptops as listen to music. Video is displacing (at least in part) audio only as a format of choice for on-demand entertainment for the masses. Affordable home theater systems and streaming HD video on mobile devices weren't available when the CD was on the drawing board.

I also think all this digital complexity and nonsense is helping drive the re-emergence of vinyl. My comlpletely non-audiophile but digitally fluent son bought a Bass Nector lp recently because he was intrigued by the tangible nature of owning a 12" piece of art and cuing the needle on the disk. Once he notices the sound benefits of analogue, he may get hooked, something that CDs will never offer over HD digital formats.

The other elephant in the room with respect to digital music sales is that XX% of music files are changing hands for free. That was happening long before venders figured out how to charge for downloads, and my guess is it will continue as long as people realize they can get something for free instead of having to pay for it.

So yeah, the CD player is dying. But the last CD player I bought sounds noticably better than the one it replaced. Same disks, better DAC and transport etc. When the new one wears out, I will want another one or something that can at do at least as good of job at extracting music from CDs to play my disks. And lets face it, most of those billions of plastic disks out there will last physically much longer than any of the devices designed to play them and everbody posting here.

"And now we turn to our headline fact - that 77,400 turntables were sold in the year to May (a 11% increase). That compares to 41,400 CD players.”

Thanks for that info Knownothing. That’s astounding to me. I feel like I just fell off the proverbial turnip truck.

I would like to point out that another WhatHiFi article , from the year 2009, reports sales of 570,000 BluRay players and that BluRay represents 25% of the video player market, for total video player sales of 2.3 million.

http://www.whathifi.com/blog/the-year-of-the-headphone-2009-hi-fi-and-av-sales-figures-revealed

Also, computers and game systems can be used as players.

Since video players can play CD's (and some of them SACD's) most people don't need a CD ONLY player.

Perhaps the single function CD player is passe, but the CD format can still thrive.

Ken

What's BluRay? Oh yeah, this decades version of the 8-track.

The cd player is not dead....but you would be a fool to buy one.