Alan Smithee

Well, it's not that I'm old, it's that a lot of current music really does suck!

TheBang

I found some cool graphs here:

https://www.riaa.com/u-s-sales-database/

The chart only has data through 2015, but some interesting numbers from 2015:

Vinyl: $415 million
CD: $1.5 billion
Downloads (singles and albums): $2.3 billion
Subscriptions: $1.2 billion (this is stuff like Spotify, Apple Music, etc.)

Here's the 1H 2016 report:

http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploa...AMidyear16.pdf

and some analysis:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...st-half-growth

slop101

That's true of any time. There's plenty of good music out there these days. The difference is that much of the good stuff is a lot more obscure and underground than it may have been 10, 30, 40 years ago. Give me a name of a band you like, and I can give you at least 10 current-day bands that you've never heard of that are similar and/or ones you would like just as much, if not more.

Josh-da-man

For music, I think most people are using a streaming service like Pandora or using Youtube. Not surprising that sales, both CDs and purchased downloads, are declining.

BuckNaked2k

I'm 'bout done with buying music. Can't think of a single title I've purchased in the past year. Blu-ray collecting is also coming to an end, with the amount of available shelf space all but gone.

arbogast777

I'm in the same boat. I just bought a year of Apple Music for $99. I now have access to 40,000 albums. That's good enough for me.

Physical discs are going that way for me too, but for different reasons.

WeeBey

So the local Best Buy relocated a few months ago. Finally checked it out today and while the new Best Buy store layout is really nice, the movie section was massively shrunken down. It's one side of one shelf. I was seriously taken aback, simply didn't expect that. Very limited selection. Also, as far as I could tell, they stopped selling music.

BuckNaked2k

They stopped "selling" music a long time ago.

bruceames

Is the new store smaller? That would help explain the downsizing. But even so, that's a pathetically small amount of space to dedicate to packaged media. I haven't checked my BB to see if they still carry CDs, but I'm going there tomorrow and will do so out of curiosity (if I remember).

WeeBey

I think it's about the same size but the TV section was bigger and there was a whole smart home setup in the middle of the store. I also noticed that the headphone area was larger. The blu-rays and video games were in the back of the store just behind the TVs, in the old store they were right up front. Videogames section was also smaller but it was the limited amount of movies and zero music that surprised me.

The old store looked something like this, notice all the packaged media upfront:

https://goo.gl/images/3JCiMR

I can't find any pictures online of how it looks now. I can only describe it as more modern, dense, brighter, maybe more stylish. Hard to describe.

Coral

I've noticed this as well at Best Buy.

Years ago the CD section of Best Buy, Future Shop (BB and FS used to be separate companies) and HMV was shrinking fast and the DVD section was always growing and taking up more space in the stores. Now I'm seeing the DVD/BD sections getting smaller every year, with less selection and more "bargain bins" that contain titles that are only a few months old.

And now when I go into these stores perusing the DVD/BD section, I'm usually the only one there browsing. Even with the section shrinking, it seems to still be taking up more space than it's worth.

The times they are a changin'.

JimRochester

I may be changing credit cards. I have the BB card that I use for all my business expenses and am usually Elite status in March or April. So I have a crapload of RZ dollars that pile up. I always used them for ink and DVD/BR's. Plus the occasional iPad for the wife. I just bought 2 TV seasons and Civil War and my son wanted to know why I wasted my money on Blacklist and The Americans when we can just stream them. A) habit. B) I got to spend those RZ dollars on something. C) I'm now in that HP ink subscription so I don't spend on that either.

As far as CD's go around here they haven't had more than a shelf or two for years. But I don't think I've purchased a CD in decades. In the car I listen to mostly talk radio; local current events, politics and sports during football season. At home I use the computer for MP3 or youtube.

bruceames

The only time I buy a CD is when I go on my yearly road trip to Mt. Whitney. We always stop at a Walmart on the way and I'll pick up a CD or two to listen.

I enjoy talk radio or news but the excessive commercials drive me crazy. It seems these days they have about 25 minutes of commercials in every hour.

For music at home I love watching Youtube videos and using the voice search feature.

Adam Tyner

I still buy CDs fairly frequently but only online. Generally through Amazon, occasionally directly from a band/label, infrequently on eBay.

The record stores I went to either closed or relocated to really inconvenient locations (...before closing).

mndtrp

It's been a handful of months since I was in my local BestBuy, but at that point there were still a couple of rows of both movies and music. The gaming section was still pretty large, too.

slop101

To be fair, the only section of a BB store that seems to have any people in it is the customer service line.

Coral

To be honest, I find overall that Best Buys aren't nearly as busy as they used to be. Any time of the day or week that I go, there doesn't seem to be more than 10 customers in the store - and most of them are looking at the TVs.

morriscroy

The record stores I use to shop at frequently were highly specialized niche ones, which closed down more than a decade ago. (Ones which specialized in less popular punk rock type stuff back in the day).


Nowadays I'm too lazy to go digging through my cd collection to search for a particular title. Easier to just find a song (or album) on youtube to listen to.


Nowadays I'm only willing to "blind buy" new cd titles by Iron Maiden. Albeit only new studio albums by Maiden. (I don't bother listening to their crappy live album cds/dvds/blurays, which they seem to release with every tour). Primarily because I find their albums sound like garbage on the computer, but sound ok on my standalone stereo system.

Otherwise I hardly buy any music cds these days.

Coral

For me, Youtube is great for listening to a new CD or discovering some new music - but if I enjoy it enough, then I'll buy the CD (if/when it matches my price criteria... new or used). Youtube sound quality is lacking for any serious music listening.

JimRochester

We still have a few places dedicated to music. There is one that is very well known so musicians come from all over to visit this store. It started out as an instrument store then evolved into a destination of sorts. Well known for goofy commercials with costumes and psychedelic themes. Still a strong collection of CD and DVD media. My uncle who is a music fanatic says he can walk in there and find all these obscure music and music video titles in stock. Back in the day, it was record store to go to. House Of Guitars

PhantomStranger

I still browse Best Buy's CD section but only occasionally purchase from them. Mostly for a lack of what I am looking for, which is deeper catalog albums than they carry.

I'm pretty sure I buy more CDs than anyone else reading this forum. All I will say is that it's in the three digits this year alone.

orangerunner

The media section has shrunk at my Best Buy as well. They've been using double-sided sandwich board advertising to help fill in the dead space.

I think the technological "renaissance" of the mid 2000s is in a lull. Between 2000 and 2008 everyone was buying digital cameras, colour printers, slim computer monitors, phones, HDTVs, DVDs, digital picture frames, updating their computers, laptops etc.

I am still operating a Windows Vista from 2007 and (for what I use it for) it works fine. In 2007, could you still operate a nine-year-old Windows 98 with 256k RAM? Not a chance.

Other than phones, things have leveled off a little bit these days. At least people have things they don't necessarily feel they need to upgrade.

joltman

As I was reading this, it made me think of a place I visited in Rochester, NY one time years ago, and sure enough that's the one! That place was cool, I'd love to visit it again sometime.

Since everyone else is talking about it, I still buy a handful of CDs a year. I mostly get them cheap online, except when a new release comes out and I'll get it at FYE if they have it and it's not too expensive. I mostly listen to punk, so FYE doesn't always get it, but I was surprised a couple months ago when the Bouncing Souls and Descendents both had new albums out on the same day and FYE had them both and for a decent price. Besides them, I don't think there's anyone near me that sells new CDs anymore, just a couple of used CD stores and a punk store that's not too far that doesn't sell CDs anymore, just vinyl.

Shannon Nutt

BB made a big mistake when they re-designed their store layout to focus less on software/media and more on big-ticket hardware. I'm guessing 50 percent of the people that go into BB looking for a TV, computer or other item are just checking the product out there with the intent to buy cheaper online.

morriscroy

Most of the punk/metal cds I've been buying over the years, is mostly catalog stuff from the 80s and earlier. I more or less stopped listening to "new" punk releases sometime in the 1990s (when Nirvana and later Green Day became really big, etc ...).

I don't know if I'm just getting old, but I found most newer releases somewhat hard to listen to. Even if they're in the same style as the 70s/80s era stuff I listened to a lot back in the day.

I can only attribute this musical "brain damaged" mentality to being teenager -> young adult when I was listening to a lot of then-current punk rock and metal back in the 1980s. My guess is if I was 10 or 20 years younger (hypothetically), I might not think much of 70s/80s punk rock and metal.