Those of you outside the US or with friends and relatives there, is this just a US thing, that all music is either in the cloud and streamed, or electronically downloaded to an iPhone/iPod like device?
Amazon pretty much killed off the brick-and-mortar record stores, but now I find that even Amazon doesn't seem too interested in carrying CDs. They may have recent releases, but otherwise what you get is other sellers on the Amazon storefront. And these other sellers are predominantly in the UK, followed by Japan and Germany. Which leads me to believe people in those countries still buy CDs, maybe at actual record stores. So is this a cultural difference? Or is the trend just hitting Europe and Japan a little later than here? One thing I miss are the EP singles, not the 2 songs on 7 inch vinyl, more like 4-5 songs on a CD. Often these were exclusive for Borders or Barnes & Noble, or sent out to record stores to promote an upcoming album. Often they had bonus tracks or live performances that never made it to the albums. I still see a few of these for Barnes & Noble but from sellers in the UK, leading me to believe that even Barnes & Noble sells more music at their UK stores than here. How long before physical media for content distribution is totally dead? Already pretty much true for software and games, plus software seems to be going to the subscription model (like Office 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud). I suspect music CDs may not be long for this world, even though vinyl has made a comeback - how strange. Will they stop releasing movies on Blu-Ray? Will they work out DRM so you can buy movies via electronic download, or will all video be streamed from the cloud? Maybe what I'm missing is that most people today are never without their phones, so that's the only logical place to have their music. I'm probably a dinosaur, sticking a CD in the stereo, or grabbing a handful to play in the car.
