This from R&R:

-------------Report: Digital To Lead Music Sales In Five Years-------------
By Jennifer Netherby, Billboard

Digital music sales will surpass CD sales in five years, according to a new report from Forrester Research ominously titled "The End of Music As We Know It."

Forrester predicts digital sales will grow by 23% a year through 2012, when they will reach $4.8 billion in annual sales. CD sales will slide to $3.8 billion in 2012, according to the report. However, digital growth won't make up for CD declines over the next five years.

Forrester surveyed 5,000 consumers in the U.S. and Canada. The company found that MP3 devices are being underutilized, with just 57% of their capacity filled. Forrester also predicts that DRM-free downloads will extend to Apple iTunes and other services and onto social networks, where friends could sell friends their favorite songs.

Forrester believes digital downloads will dominate sales in coming years, but sees some growth potential for online music subscription services, which it believes will grow to $459 million in revenues by 2012. Ad-supported downloads will fail to take off because of DRM-free music and on-demand
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In other CD news today from All Access, the TVT Records label that launched the Television's Greatest Hits volumes, laid off the majoity of its employees Monday and is expected to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week.

TV theme songs just havent been the same lately.

The music is the same, just the method of distributing it is changing. Well, actually the music isn't the same, I miss Bobby Darin and Tennessee Earnit Ford and Lesley Gore.

>>digital growth won't make up for CD declines

... partly because you will no longer have to purchase a whole CD to get the one or two songs you really want. The industry erred in deemphasizing the "single" release after vinyl was phased out.

Thats a good point, why have cd singles all phased out???
I remember back in the day, going to Tower Records and buying the cd single instead of the whole album because usually I can find out if most of the cd is crap.

partly because you will no longer have to purchase a whole CD to get the one or two songs you really want.

This is what's wrong with music today!!!! ONLY 1 or 2 songs on an album (see how old I am) are worth it!

Back in the day it was a lot easier to 'fall in love' with an artist just exactly because you bought an album with several 'hits' on them and the rest of it might have been good but not really a hit at the time you bought it. As an example the Carly Simon album Your so Vein, 1972. That thing was loaded with great music, but much of it wasnt a 'pop' hit or charting yet at the time it was first released.

Those cuts got a lot of airplay afterwards and they are classics now in part because they were released on the album and listened to by fans who then encouraged their LOCAL DJs to play it.

I miss those days and it looks like they will never be back period. Now its all about breaking hits and then oblivion , then another hit (maybe ) etc. Hit or miss the hits on your local dowload site !??

I really miss strolling up and down the isles at Tower Records charging up anything and everything I (and some of my colleagues) wanted to the SOB owner of the radio station. I particularly enjoyed the box set section. I still buy full CD's from one of several music services on the Internet. Always will buy the full CD.

So will I, really.

In my view (feel to flame me on this as you please) not all of the "songs in between the hits" are crap! Note however that the Shins and about 99% of American Idle [sic] are excluded from this definition, that's why I said "not all".............. ;o)

But really that's why I buy the full CDs. Some of the "dull" songs can actually be quite good, especially when the it comes to the point in time when radio jukeboxes--e.g. our friend Otto--have played the one or two hits to death!!

Compressed audio should be a fraction of the uncompressed price. If a CD single is 4.99 and the mp4 is 1/11th the data - the price should be 40 cents! Funny how we want HDTV with lots of bandwidth for high quality, but with music we wan't very small files.

Was at the Beaverton Borders Book & Music yesterday. Hadn't checked the CD's area since Christmas. What a surprise to see two racks completely empty on the back isles. Both of four sides! I asked to see if they had moved them somewhere else. They told me they're consolidating. Meaning they're not re-ordering much stock. It's all fading away........

Its hard to compete with MP3 players. I used mine last night doing a rather monotonous job for 4 hours. Just walking about with some headphones (real ones not ear plugs ) with my MP3 player and 334 tunes on it set to shuffle...It was great really, nothing like creating your own universe with downloaded internet music.

I want my MTV !!!

I like the CD's too. Quality is very good --at least if mastered well. And they are open and robust.

Agree with the data rate / price bit. I normally pay about $0.20 / track on gomusic.ru. Not quite the quality / price proposition allofmp3.com was, but it works for good enough casual listening.

If the RIAA was smart about that, they could easily be raking in a lot of quick, knee jerk sales, then go back and sell again on quality, remix, similar artists (tie in Pandora like system), and other promos.

I really liked the option of buying a low bitrate track for sampling and just mulling over, then going back for the full wave file, if I wanted.

That's not available right now, so it's either cheap download, or CD, used first, new second. The exception is indie artists. I buy their tracks / albums from them, new and on physical media if I can get it.

One good thing that's happening is the reduction in strong DRM. Enough people have gotten burned that it's proving to not be the value preservation device it was thought to be.

Another thing too. At lower prices per track, it's actually worth it to just go and grab a track for whatever reason. $1 / track is hard to justify repurchasing, but $0.20 really is!

When I know I can very quickly obtain that track, in reasonable quality, I'll do it on a whim. IMHO, that's something to be considered and encouraged.

Friend at work discussing music? Go buy each other some tunes. Lose one, replace it. Want to explore remakes, ... lots of reasons.

The download is just not as enduring as physical media is for a lot of people and situations. People lose pods, computers, and maybe just delete things. All valid reasons for repurchases --given the bar is low enough.

>>Borders Book & Music ... two racks completely empty on the back isles.

Amazon is another factor. Who needs a steenking "bricks & mortar" store with a shrinking selection when you can find most any in-print CD at Amazon, usually with free P & H, not to mention the ability to hear samples of most of the music online. Then there is the Amazon MP3 store with 256kbps files, DRM-free.

I do hate to see the true collector's record stores of old going by the wayside though. Even L.A.s original House of Records (since 1952) recently called it quits.