Best Buy to Stop Selling CDs Starting July 1

[Monroe]

Best Buy to Stop Selling CDs Starting July 1

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/3/best-buy-stop-selling-cds-starting-july-1-report/

By Andrew Blake - The Washington Times - Saturday, February 3, 2018

Best Buy is reportedly slated to stop selling compact discs this summer, pressing pause amid years of slumped sales at its stores and others.

Billboard reported Friday that Best Buy plans to stop carrying CDs at its retail stores effective July 1, citing undisclosed sources.

Best Buy did not immediately return a message seeking comment, and the music magazine’s report could not be independently verified.

CD sales have been on the decline in the U.S. for years, however, and lately the business has only generated Best Buy about $40 million annually, Billboard reported — a far cry for what used to be one of the nation’s biggest music retailers.

CD sales in the U.S. market dropped by 16.3 percent from 125 million copies in 2015 to 104.8 million in 2016, according to an annual end-of-year Nielsen report released in early 2017. Taking into consideration CDs, cassettes and vinyl records, physical album sales at mass-merchant retail chain stores decreased by 24.5 percent during that same span, the report said.

Nielsen’s latest annual year report, report released last month, did not account for CD sales specifically but said that total physical album sales had dropped 16.5 percent since 2016, down to 102.9 million copies in 2017. About 14.3 million of those albums were vinyl, according to the latest report.

Best Buy plans to continue carrying vinyl records, but will start selling albums alongside its turntables, Billboard reported.

Headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota, Best Buy operated slightly more than 1,000 retail shops in North America as of late 2016. The company started off as an audio-video retailer before morphing into the so-called “big box” store it is today, and Billboard said the chain was at one point “the most powerful music merchandiser” in the country.

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[shorterxp]

Good riddance, that technology is holding hifi back. All Ima say.

[dencorso]

Not at all. It's a sad day. Every time a technology that gives one a hardcopy of what one buys dies is a time some of our collective freedom is lost.   You must understand one has a book or a CD/DVD with a .pdf, or with music, or whatever, one owns that... one has a text into kindle or a music in iTunes one got nothing, and it can be taken from one anytime with little or no explanation and no money back, because one had previously given them the right to do it, when buying that. Ever heard of the memory hole?

[Tripredacus]

I can't remember the last time I had bought a CD at a big retail store like that. Now there are no music stores around, it still hasn't led me to buying CDs at retail. That isn't to say I don't buy CDs, but basically I tend to not want to spend money for listening to music I can hear for free on the radio... basically retail stores only sell pop music.

[dencorso]

I buy from Japan, sometimes from Finland and, when available, from amazon.com... Even considering the importation taxes double the price (only books and printed matter in general are tax-free in Brazil), if they have what I want, I'm OK with it.

[Monroe]

I doubt that I will ever buy another CD ... having music on a flash drive is more convenient these days for me.
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Edited June 21, 2018 by monroe

[Chociu]

I still buy CDs online, because I like to have a physical copy that I can rip to whatever format I like directly from it rather than either relying on wasting mobile data through streaming sites or resorting to YouTube rips from Russian MP3 websites...

I have all but two of Feeder's albums for instance on CD

Edited December 4, 2018 by Chociu

[Dibya]

I prefer buying cd to rip flac files for my fio M3.

[NojusK]

I still buy CDs from my local supermarket Why? to burn music and burn copies of old Windows like 98,NT4,etc.I never had or owned a flash drive.