Source : http://www.realtechnews.com

The famous analysts of Gartner have moved to a new topic. It relates to the sale of CD and even if their predictions are not achieved, it has what it takes to shake the Majors producers of music and the traditional channels of distribution.
The analysis considers indeed that the era of CD has ended and that Christmas 2008 will be the last of of materialized music.
Already, the retailers decreased spaces reserved for CD; the physical sales of the media accounted for 91% of business in 2005; it was already no more than of 77% in 2007.
Always according to this analysis, the Major producers should agree to disregard traditional launching of albums, to calm their fights against the hacking and to concentrate on the new channels of distribution by focusing their energy there.

Of course, it is hard to imagine the Majors producers will accept this easily; to give up their practices and especially to accept the idea of having more and more interaction with iTunes that is now the top seller of music in the United States in front of Wal-Mart.

[translation by crispin]

I think we've had a news story like this before and that I've already made this comment, but it bears repeating. To use Mark Twain's words, I believe that reports of the CD's death are premature. Sure, for a 4-minute pop song or even a pop album, the considerations you mention are probably valid. But what about those of us who buy classical music? Do you really imagine that we've arrived at the point where a MP3 download of The Ring of the Niebelungen or Beethoven's late quartets is a viable and acceptable medium for distribution? In the first place, there is the issue of sheer length. And in the second, there is the problem of sound quality: the level of quality that might be satisfactory for a Celine Dion album is far from acceptable to audiophiles.

Well said Dana .. you may be right: however personally I buy CDs of classical music. In Geneva there used to be a shop that just sold such CDs. It went out of business some years ago. Now we have FNAC (a large electronic/multimedia store) and their CD section is rather small - and the classical part even smaller. It makes it almost impossible to find anything by browsing through the CDs - you have to get them to order it... thus you may as well order it through the internet. Thus the CD section will get even smaller... and without retailers selling CDs - I am sure that this market will dry up. This does not mean that you will not be able to order special CDs from the Major producers directly for a really excellent performance.

Re audiophiles ... I am not sure that it is possible to hear the difference between a CD and a MP3 made at 320 kb/s ... I am sure that the audiophiles say they can - but the days of this CD format are numbered...

erm – don't mp3s have a limited frequency response and poor dynamic range (compression)?

Whatever, about the future of CD – how does one explain the recent renaissance in vinyl?

Isn't DVDV-A an even superior format to regular audio CD?

Isn't the recent mp3 phenomena based on a segment of the market where end-users become conditioned into accepting a dodgy audio quality, much in the same way that audio cassettes were used, despite the fact that 8 track cartridges held sonic superiority?

Indeed MP3 limits the bandwidth ... to about 17 kHz with 160 kbps mp3 compression ... but 320 kbps can go up to 21 kHz... Re dynamic range - I do not know - does the mp3 codec compress the dynamic range? I wait to be educated... however I know that many studios in the remastering of the sound track deliberately compress the dynamic range and then boost the sound to the maximum... thus the music sounds loud all the time so that computer users can hear it from their crappy speakers in an office enviroment. I suspect (and hope) that classical music does not have this compression done at the remastering phase.
Regarding vinyl... how can you explain it. When CDs first came out - many people clung onto their vinyl equipment and collection claiming it was better quality audio. Vinyl have limited dynamic range (~80 db up to 120 db in exceptional cases compared to 150 db of the CD). There frequency response is limited - not by the medium itself but in the manufacturing process ... etc There is no good reason to go back to vinyl now except for nostalgic reasons.
The mp3 phenomena is to feed music to people who will only listen to it through these miserable earplugs that come with the iPod ... or from flakey computer speakers. Since this is a large segment of the market ... it drives the market ... the dodgy audio really comes from the mastering of the original sound track rather than from the mp3 codec.