the average shelf life of a CD

Hi people,

recently I have been thinking baout the average shelf life a CD has in this soceity. As you read it you will gather that I do love my CDs ad hope that one day they will pick up on popularity again.

The average shelf life

Of a CD.

I don’t know about you, but I love nothing more than taking a trip down to HMV and browsing through the CD’s that are on offer. Also I will also take a stroll to crash and Jumbo records to see if anything takes my fancy there. But with the announcements that HMV are struggling, and that they are closing down a number of stores. It is hard to believe that this wonderful product may soon be gone, and replaced with the digital format.

Now I may be living in the past, but I love having the hard copy of an album, that the artists have put effort into making. It just feels lazy that we now, live in a society that lives on the digital copy of an album. It’s not only the digital versions that are putting the CDs out of business, it’s the illegal downloads. Recent research has shown that illegal downloads has dropped, but is this because now you have the video converters, rather than using the dedicated sites such as, bear share, pirate bay and lime-wire. It’s a scary thought to think that CDs could be no more in a few years because of this new digital society.

CDs overtook records, but CDs also survived the mini-disk (remember them) but it does not look like they will be able to survive this generation. We will still use them for making our own albums, and even to burn our digital version of the album we have just bought onto. But the age of record stores is slowly dieing. This is now why we have such days as national record store days. This is not for the huge companies, but for the small independent record stores, who rely on people to but the real thing from them.

The smaller bands, which have yet to score a record deal, will use this digital format, to save money and be able to get the music out to, record companies, magazines and bloggers. So in this instance this it is a good idea to move on from CDs, it allows bands with a low expenditure to broaden the horizons and allow music to be heard. On this level I do think that the digital way of life is a huge improvement, but I am still for the CDs. To me I think that it is just that feeling of being able to hold it and realise how much effort the artist has gone into making it, right down to the artwork.

So I am both for and against digital copies of music but my heart does, and will always lie with CDs. There is just something about them that, makes me happy. Being able to put them in order (yes I know a little OCD but it makes it easier to find them). The actual act of being able to go out and buy them knowing you are supporting what they have done. I think I will always be pro CDs, and I am not looking forward to the day that they, are to be no more. I think it will be a crying shame, and the generations after me, will have seriously missed out.