The days of running to the record store and picking up a couple of slamming tracks are long behind us; the era of instant streaming has dawned. With the push of a button on iTunes, you barely notice that you are paying for it. With online media, you are able to choose your preferred songs from an otherwise unimpressive album, but it wasn’t always like that. There could be a one hit wonder song on the radio and that’s all that you would want, but before digital downloads you had to buy the whole album. This was, of course, disappointing when you did not appreciate the other songs. Moreover, what ever happened to those personal mix tapes? Although it was great to exchange them, our generation is used to more electronic versions of audio. Along with mixed CDs, records went downhill, and that makes me wonder if CDs will have the same fate?

I have mixed feelings towards the question primarily because of CDs being practical due to their cheaper values for the same music online. I went to Independent Records, and an album that could be $7.99 in the iTunes store, could be $2.99 there. In a way, you pay for the convenience of being able to get it with a single click on iTunes.

The thing is, the sales of music production in general have been dropping. A lot of the music that people lean towards is streaming, such as the services like Spotify, Pandora, etc. Research has shown that the targeted amount of people that still routinely buy physical music, have been in their middle-age, which makes sense since that age group grew up at the time when CDs were popular. Reggie Ugwu, a BuzzFeed writer states, “61% of people who buy CDs are 36 and older, according to MusicWatch’s estimate. Ten years ago, that figure was just 36%. Back in 2004, people over 50 made up just 19% of the CD-buying population, but today they’re more than a third.” I interviewed a person at the Independent Records store, asking if they thought that CDs will fade off like records, in the future, and they responded, “I think they’ll come back as hipster items and I think that people will realize that they are just better quality, but online will always be more dominant in sales. But I don’t think it will fade away.” Her answer to if she bought more physical music or items on iTunes relates right back to the main point, “I don’t buy music very much, but I think that iTunes will go out of style, because there are things that you could pay like 5 bucks a month and get a whole bunch of music, such as Spotify.”