Like vinyl, it will live on as an audiophile anachronism while the download generation teases us for being nerdy hobbyists pursuing an expensive and therefore "elitist" pastime. Although, having said that, many audiophiles are now moving to high-resolution downloads (FLAC and WAV) that are of higher quality than CD. And having said that, we're finding a number of them aren't actually as hi-res as is claimed... The irony is, of course, that as hi-fi kit gets better and better, the general quality of recorded music gets worse and worse.

Meantime, back in the mainstream, the world seems to have decided that 128 kbps MP3 files played through a one-speaker boom-box is high enough hi-fi.

going by your twitter profile, is this somewhere in Co Tipp?

That's me Ivan. Drop me a tweet and I'll let you know where it is.

That's a bit of a drive for a few Stephen Fretwell albums!

I didn't realise that there was a Dublin get together in October. I'm in Dublin quite a bit for meetings so I might try to schedule them around it.

What date is it?

Kingston HMV on Monday I felt like a vulture picking at the dead carcass of the music industry as I remember it, sad really but some real bargains available folks!

...for the first time. I guess the music industry is Gloria Swanson now.

CDs still made up 80% of the 98 Million albums sold in the UK last year. Nothing like 20 years ago but still quite a lot of units shifting, considering the state of the retail sector and 'the competition' which is downloading for nowt.

It'll fall this year (although Adele has added a few lorry loads), and HMVs flailing around is not helping matters.
At the very least, the music industry really needs to think about lowering the cost of New CDs. Some new releases still go out for £12.99 or more which is just insane. I see no reason why the premium price shouldn't be equal or *less* than the iTunes download price (since that greedy bastard Ian Tunes doesn't get his cut)

You may notice a new music retailer on the scene, and indeed if you walk around a branch of 'That's Entertainment' (2nd hand CD chain set up by the former Music Zone retailers) you'll see that the big sellers of yesteryear are worth a cool 99p (Oasis, Robbie Williams, Spice Girls.). It's a fire sale but what 'That's Entertainment' does suggest is that £4 is a reasonable price for a 'nearly new' CD and judging by the amount of people shopping in there when I popped in this week people are still buying the things.

I help out on a music market stall sometimes, we sell lots of second hand vinyl, and we can still sell second hand CDs for £3-£4 to people of all ages not just Word Readers.

Mass produced stuff and 'of its time' stuff just doesn't shift (Razorlight, Simply Red) , but anything like classic soul/funk/jazz stuff, classic rock stuff like Nick Drake, Stones, HJHs, Led Zep etc still sells, and good quality indie/dance stuff still sells especially more recent stuff since a lot of that was manufactured in short runs and is out of print, and anything unusual like Prog stuff or folk does very well.

Whether the £60 a year I spend on Spotify Unlimited is equivalent to what I used to spend on cds in a year probably not but still £60 a year from millions of people is still a lot of money

....at least a dozen in the last month (incidentally they're all old stuff, mostly 70s remasters etc)