Maybe you’ve read about it elsewhere, or perhaps even experienced it in your own life. The growing decline of Compact Disc usage in our lives has reached what some are calling a remarkable period. Perhaps this is the beginning of CDs truly becoming extinct, some say. Some people like Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban:
“Then it occured to me, that I haven’t used my CD Player, portable or at home, in a long, long time. That I rarely, if ever see anyone walking around with a portable CD player anymore. They have all been replaced by MP3 players. If everyone is switching to MP3 players, whether they are Ipods, in phones, in PDAs, in cars, whatever, then that means that everyone is going to have to go through a multistep process in order to get the music from where or how they buy it, to the place they want it.“
“MP3 players are changing peoples listening habits. We don’t carry folders filled with CDs anymore. We carry our library in our MP3 players. We don’t listen to CDs. We listen to playlists that we adjust all the time. We don’t burn CDs anymore, it’s too time consuming. We copy all our music to our MP3 players so it’s all available at our fingertips.“
That was just an excerpt from his longer blog post, and although I don’t agree with his point that CDs are too time consuming to burn (it takes me less than 3min to burn 200 mp3′s on a blank CD-R.), I would have to agree with him that I find the usage of CDs in my own life to be dwindling. I have a nice CD stereo system with AM/FM radio that I haven’t touched in over a year. Now, this goes beyond just the CD issue, it crosses over into the realm of FM radio. With my PC, I have music-on-demand. Any music I want, anytime I want it, how I want it. It’s completely in my control, no commercials, no mindless chatter. Why would I want anything less?
So you see, I agree with Mark Cuban, the CD is failing and so are many forms of media transferrence not related to wireless, medialess, and internet options. Thanks to my new Sony PSP, I can take my music anywhere, I can take movies, TV shows and games with me in the same device. The same can not be done with conventional media players, those being, CD players.
I urge you all to read Mark Cuban’s blog and read his personal account of this story, though, he’s more forgiving of the music industry, and sounds like he actually wants to see them do better, while I’m completely comfortable with getting all of my music, tv shows and movies off the internet. 
