Aug
17
The CD turns 25
Filed Under Current Issues, News, Technology
The CD turns 25 today. CNN.com has an informative article on the research and development behind the shiny disc. The article also discusses the declining sales of the CD. I purchased 3 CD’s earlier this year. Even with those three, I can likely count all of the CD’s I have bought in the last 5 years on my fingers. They are just not practical and I end up ripping them to ACC and putting them on my iPod anyway. For the most part, I just buy songs off iTunes.
Speaking of iTunes, it seems I am not alone in liking its service. Apple announced on 31 July 2007 that it sold 3 Billion songs on iTunes. This is phenomenal growth. Apple launched iTunes in April 2003 and sold 1 Million songs in only 5 days. In a year, it sold 70 Million. The store hit a half-billion downloads on 17 July 2005, just 2 years and 3 months after it opened. What is more incredible, is that iTunes sold its second half-billion a mere 7 months down the road on 23 February 2006. But its amazing feats don’t end there. 11 months after selling 1 Billion songs, an achievement that took nearly 3 years, iTones sold its second Billion songs in January 2007. Six months later, in July, Apple announced it had hit 3 Billion songs. That is an average of 57.6 songs per second!
The glories of iTunes is simple, you buy only the songs you want and, if you want to buy the whole album, it is cheaper than the local record store. It is no wonder that CD sales are falling and while illegal downloading of music may be partially to blame for the decline of the CD, at 3 BILLION (that’s 3,000,000,000) downloads, I would say that legal services like iTunes and Napster have something to do with it.
Technology is changing and the CD is not going to remain the format of choice forever. It will, however, be around for at least a while longer. It remains a cheap and effective way to backup and distribute data.
yahoo.com, abcnews.com, and ibtimes.com were used as sources for this article.