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As streaming music booms, CD sales are no more at Best Buy 

As streaming music booms, CD sales are no more at Best Buy 

One of the industries that has both adapted to and felt the pain of our Digital Lifestyle investing theme is the music industry, something near and dear to the hearts and souls of team Tematica. Over the decades, we’ve seen the migration from vinyl albums to 8-track to cassettes to CDs followed by the abiltiy to rip and burn CDs, downloadable music and now streaming services. While it’s resulted in people buying the same music content more than once, people have continued to do so to have the music they want when they want it, where they want it and on the device they have at the moment. This has given rise to streaming subscription services like Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music.

According to Loudwire, more than 62% of the total music market is now made up of streaming services, and physical sales only account for around 16% of the overall revenues. Following an announcement earlier this year, yesterday we said bye-bye to CD sales at Best Buy and soon perhaps at Target. What will Best Buy use the additional floor space for? Most likely appliances and other connected devices.

 

It’s the end of an era. Today is officially the last day you will be able to buy CDs at Best Buy, as they are pulling the discs from their shelves July 1st.

Back in February, we reported that the tech giant would be phasing out the products due to steadily declining sales over the years.

Seeing as Best Buy followed through on their promise, Target may be next to phase out CDs. In February, they gave an ultimatum to both their music and video suppliers trying to shift inventory risk back to the labels. If the wholesale companies don’t abide to the new terms, Target may slowly phase out CDs and DVDs as well.

Source: Today is the last day you can purchase CDs at Best Buy – Alternative Press

Classy Classic Queen

Tuesday night I was lucky enough to see Queen performing in Milan with Adam Lambert.    Queen, well what’s left of Queen, still has it and Adam Lambert brought along insane vocal and performance skills, along with something even more rare in the music industry.  He’s a very classy guy.  After Kanye West’s ridiculous behavior over Beck’s Grammy Sunday night, it was an absolute pleasure to see someone so young treating those who came before him with genuine respect.  (Kayne and his wife are truly cut from the same cloth, two champions of the selfie-nation, utterly lacking any grace while ignorantly blustering about their own magnificence; must be exhausting to live staring at yourself in the mirror.)  Adam was clearly  utterly loving being on stage with the band and gave the audience his very best.  Unlike Kayne, Adam has the maturity to know that respecting another person in now way diminishes you.  His solo career hasn’t yet taken off to the degree that his talent suggests, hopefully this experience will help him find his own “voice” and let us enjoy him much more.

Queen played most of the classics and Adam kept the audience in the palm of his hand throughout evening.  I have to say it was pretty awesome to hear an forum full of Italians belting out Queen hits for all they were worth!    The opening performances had Adam seriously channeling George Michael Faith-style, which embarrassingly had me feeling like a teen groupie… economist/investor/world-traveller/Lambert groupie?  Perhaps I was still suffering from jet lag.  Yeah, let’s go with that.  Bohemian Rhapsody was a bit of a tear-jerker duet between Adam on stage and a Freddie Mercury video on a massive screen above.

If you get the chance and are a lover of classic rock, I highly recommend seeing this tour, or the more than likely one that will follow after Queen’s next album with recently discovered Freddy Mercury tracks drops later this year.  It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.  Here’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” from the evening. Hear all the Italians singing along… love how music is so universal. (Oh and by the way, the show just a few days before this one was cancelled because Adam had bronchitis. Talk about a professional!  Music and class makes for a great evening.)