OK, this picture honestly doesn't show much of anything, but I still didn't really feel like kicking it out of the set, so here you go! Off in the background, you can see a couple of the new Broyhill endcap displays for their home decor products. Oh, and for a new music highlight,
here's the new Cold War Kids album, which is really good as always!
Do you know if that album is on disc? I was going to buy it when it came out, but couldn't find it anywhere (which means I couldn't find it at Target, since that's the only store that sells new CDs these days. Checked Amazon also however, and didn't find it there either). Same situation with the new Neon Trees album that I had been really looking forward to all summer. First it was delayed due to the protests (not sure what the logic exactly was there), and then when it was finally released it was digital only. Vinyl is coming soon, but still no CD that I'm aware of. I still haven't listened to it at all.
ReplyDeleteI have not been to a Wal-Mart in over a year. Is Wal-Mart no longer selling new releases on CD? Do they have any CDs left at all?
DeleteI saw the CD selection, if you want to call it that, at one of the local Target stores about a month ago and it was pretty small. Something is better than nothing I suppose. I know back during better times for physical media, Target racked their own music and movies when Wal-Mart and Kmart used an outside racker. Target was thus usually considered the best discount store (aside from Korvettes for those who had one, but that's going back a long way) for music. This is especially so compared to Wal-Mart due to Wal-Mart's tendency to sell music with edited/censored lyrics.
I'm not entirely sure what's going on in the pop music world. Hopefully the record labels are not forcing fans to pay $30-40 for an LP to get a physical copy of music, but I would not be surprised if that is the case. I suppose you could always buy the digital downloads and burn them to a CD-R. Big Lots still sells CD-Rs. At least they did as of March or so. I know that buying downloadable files and burning them is not remotely the same as getting an actual album though so I feel your pain in that regard.
I know that early in the pandemic, Amazon said they were going to pause stocking new physical music and movies in order to maximize warehouse space for things people were buying during the pandemic. I'm not sure if that is still going on or if things have returned to normal. Personally, I'm not a fan of buying music from Amazon anyway.
As a classical music fan, I suppose I'm pretty lucky. Classical music listeners like the CD format and so I think the majority of new classical music albums will still be available on CD for at least the next few years. Some parts of the world where classical music is popular, like Europe and Asia, have not dumped CDs as quickly as North America has and so that probably is another reason why classical CDs are still around. It's hard to predict what will happen too far in the future though. There are some good online classical music CD shops in the US. It seems that some classical labels have raised their prices on CDs here in 2020 though and some premium labels now want ~$20 per CD. That may have happened even before the pandemic.
Here in Houston, we have a classical music CD shop. They are supposedly one of just a handful left in North America. They may even be the only one left in the US. I purchased a couple of CDs from them recently. I'm glad they're still around. Vancouver, BC had a really big classical music shop which unfortunately closed a year or two ago. Unfortunately, many other music stores in all genres have suffered similar fates.
Retail Retell: Honestly, I don't know. I'm not much of a physical media person since I would rather not have the stuff taking up space, so I get most of my music from the library or Youtube. (I'm certainly hoping there will be a CD so I can get it from the library!)
DeleteAnon: Interesting stuff as always! I'm obviously not that knowledgeable in that area.
That's awesome that your library has CDs and that you check them out. I'm guessing university/college libraries, especially ones with music schools, are probably more likely to still have physical CDs than public libraries, but maybe major public libraries still have CDs as well.
DeletePeople often forget about the neat things libraries have in their collections. Back in the 1980s, and maybe into the very early 1990s, my local public library even checked out computer software/games. I'm guessing a lot of people would simply copy the software disks that they checked out since it was pretty easy to do that. Maybe some people who check out CDs do the same. Anyway, the software copying situation in the late 1980s/early 1990s led to this infamously bad music video which I'll link below. Prepare yourself for an overload of terribleness, lol.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI
I actually get my CDs from the public library -- the UW didn't have all that much I wanted to listen to, and, of course, I don't have access to that anymore. And yep, that's exactly what I do with CDs from the library!
DeleteThe Seattle libraries do still have some pretty cool stuff! My favorite is the museum pass program, which gave out free tickets to most local museums. Of course, pretty much all of them are closed down right now... (As are the libraries, sadly.)