When it rains, it pours. Off the back of continuing sour reports on the state of the music industry's sales of CDs (only 89 million in 2017, compared to a peak of 800 million in 2001), and in music sales in general for any physical format not named Vinyl, Best Buy announced this week that they will cease selling CDs in mid-2018.
For any physical music lover, this is a major bummer.
The store had already started to decrease its in-store size allotment of CDs, as four rows became three, then two, and now in most stores, the entire A-Z section is maybe 12-15 feet long. But for a store like Best Buy that embraces all media formats (yes, they are selling Vinyl too now), it comes as a bit of a shocker to not just reduce even more, but to cease selling them altogether.
The company announced that by June 1st, it will no longer sell CDs in any of its retail stores. Best Buy will continue to sell vinyl, however, for an additional two years, because of a prior contract. Billboard notes that physical music still generated around $40 million in annual revenue for the company, but that executives "would rather dedicate the floor space to more lucrative items."
Meanwhile, Billboard also reports that Target is putting pressure on record labels in a scenario where the label would be "required to purchase back any unsold inventory." This could possibly push Target to also stop selling CDs if enough don't sell (and this doesn't work), or to decrease their size even more (which like Best Buy, has been reduced to nearly nothing).
It's a sad state for people who still like to browse and peruse physical titles. Vinyl is still on an upswing, but even in its comeback, it's still not totally mainstream enough where retailers like Best Buy, Target, or Walmart would have the same number of titles as they do (or did) with CDs. Sadly, Best Buy could be the start. All three stores have been reducing their stock for years, and Target and Walmart could follow suit. For those of us that still like to buy CDs, let's hope that doesn't happen, but the Best Buy news was a bit of a shock, even if you follow how sales have continually been down year after year.
Luckily, we still have stores like FYE around, that still focus a decent-sized portion of their stock on music, but even as the years go by, the selection has also dwindled there, in favor of more merchandise, toys, action figures, T-shirts, sound systems, and other non-CD related items.
All we can hope for at this point that its more of a slow death than a fast-paced one, and that this Best Buy scenario is an anomaly. Or, maybe, give it a few years, and CD's will become the next "vinyl"? The odds look unlikely, but we can all have hope, right?