Predicting the demise of the compact disc: Life lessons from throwing out my CDs

The Queensland floods forced a decision on what I should do with my music CDs.  Market projections suggest the medium only has a few years remaining before CDs go the way of cassettes and LPs.  When we look at what really matters in life, is that such a bad thing?

I have hundreds of CDs in boxes and folders from my radio DJ days.  I ripped the CDs to MP3 a long time before downloading music was even a concept, so the only thought I give to the piles of plastic is when I have to grudgingly move them from one spot to another.  On a continuum of annoyance to enjoyment, my CDs are an unrewarding hassle that is not so frequent as to force any real decision-making effort.

This all changed with the floods when my box of CDs that had been transported across state and country received a thorough cleanse of river water.  I am a busy guy and the task to sort and clean the discs has been low on the priority list.  I would need to un-stick the CD inserts, wipe down the discs, clean the cases, and find some new dark hole into which they could once again be forgotten.

Twelve months on, I finally get around to determining their fate.  The Internet once again comes to my rescue in telling me whether my CDs are worth the effort.

CDs on the way out

If you believe the contentious reports from February 2011, the music industry overall is in decline.  Digital is on the rise but overall sales are down, a fact many attribute to easily accessed free music downloads or the growth of legitimate independent distribution channels.

Within this shrinking economy, the animation below from Digital Music News shows the changes in formats over the past 30 years.  The growth and decline of the red CD portion is what caught my attention.

I put the percentages into a spreadsheet to see if the data could tell me anything else (as I do).  Questions in my mind are: “At what point a major medium begins to decline?”, “How soon before it starts to hit double-digit decline?”, and “What is the escalation slope of the rate of decline?”

The LP/EP took two years to go double-digit decline, the cassette 5 years, and the CD four years.  The CD looks to have stabilised its decline to an average loss of 11% per annum.  Based on trends from LPs and cassettes, we should start seeing an escalation in decline slope in 2013 give or take a year.

I do not see the CD going away tomorrow, but I also do not see anything that will reverse or slow the decline.  The only question is how long the medium has left.  Our ability to dictate technology trends has proven to be hit and miss.  Predictions of a rapid decline in CDs have been unwarranted since being declared in 2008.

There will be some expediting factors.  Car companies will stop having CD player as default in their vehicles.  Players such as Netflix encourage mediums through pricing one over another.  Major labels are said to soon abandon the medium.  This will benefit the independents for a short period, but even they will succumb to limited hardware.  Think walkmans or floppy disc drives.

Interestingly, the last year or so has seen an increase in market share for LPs from 0.1% to 0.3%.  I suspect enthusiasts would point to a resurgence.  Rather, I suspect it is more a reflection of a niche market resilient to wider market forces.  People who purchase LPs will do so regardless if the same music is available through pirated download.

The interview below makes an interesting observation about the resiliency of the LP, highlighting the “shared experience” of the LP as compared to the individualistic nature of the cassette, CD and MP3 more prone to personal headphones.  The record player was the centre piece of the room for people to talk about it, have relationship around it, and be social whereas the CD is isolated and impersonal.  The CD, as the guy says, is just not “fun”.

Life lessons

With an awareness that the medium is on its way out, has limited collector value, and an agreements that my moldy CDs were not fun, I pondered two questions as I piled my CDs into the bin:

1. Do you provide a product, a service, or meaningful value?

If you are in business, do you sell CDs or do you provide happiness through music experiences?  If the former, your value proposition is tied to the medium.  If the latter, you will always be looking for new ways to fulfil your value proposition.

2. Are you investing in something you will throw out tomorrow?

I got into radio for the music, and my CD collection was a thing of beauty.  My time spent sorting and caressing my musical mediums is now meaningless apart from immediate self-serving satisfaction.  Throwing out my CDs has me asking what else I hang onto that I don’t really need?  What do we obsess on that will eventually end up in the trash?

Music is about personal and shared experience, not about the disc.  It is so easy to get caught up in our maintenance of the “things” of life and lose sight of what we thought those things could bring.

It is an important life lesson I will consider further, right after I sort my Xbox games by colour.