Bad news for all you slow adopters of new technology! Best Buy has announced that they will stop selling CDs, starting July 1.
The past 15 years have seen innumerable pronouncements of the CD’s impending doom, and yet those brittle plastic discs have stayed strong as the principal physical format stocked by retailers — until now.
Per Pitchfork, Target is also threatening to ditch CDs if labels will not allow them to take CD stock on consignment (meaning they pay for the stock once sold, rather than once shipped.)
These appear to be the first true, decisive dominoes to fall in the noble CD’s final relegation to history’s trash heap (pending eventual resurrection as a niche product for nostalgia-fetishists and/or a dirt-cheap wholesale product for DIY musicians to press small-run releases on, á la cassettes.)
I can’t help but feel personally responsible for this development. I have been purchasing CDs steadily over the last decade and change, even as forecasts of their doom have multiplied and intensified. However, in the last year, I bought a car with an AUX input and finally acquired a record player, drastically reducing the amount of CDs I listen to. When I moved to a new city, I even left my beloved three-disc changer in my parents’ basement. No doubt this change in the CD’s, shall we say, “modest remaining consumer base” contributed to Best Buy’s decision. Oh, the grief!
