The CD Is Not Dead…Yet
Justin Gross from Slate.com gets it almost exactly right in his article, “The CD is Dead!”
In the article, he ably defends the CD’s existence by pointing out that a lot of people are still buying music in CD form.
He is right to say that the CD is not dead…yet.
As Justin writes, “…Plenty of baby boomers still buy the shiny discs; CDs account for three-quarters of all music sold.”
This is true, many baby boomers, like my parents, stay as far away from music on the computer as they possibly can. And my Dad has no idea what to do with an iPod (although, he did perk up when I mentioned that mine had audiobooks and Texas Hold ‘Em on it).
The problem for the industry though, is that the industry isn’t directed at them. It is directed at the kids who like Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, et al. And this audience is the one into downloading singles from iTunes, downloading music illegally, etc.
So either the music industry will have to shift away from selling to kids and focus on selling to soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers, or they will have to figure out a way to mine the Internet (where all the kids are hanging out anyway! - wow, I felt really old typing that…) for sales.
On a side note: How my Dad can use Windows and an ancient email client, and not be able to figure out an iPod, is beyond me.