I was reading an article on Ars Technica today Report: music fans cling to CD’s, but discover music online which highlights some research that has come from two companies in the UK. Essentially it states that out of a group of music lovers between the ages of 14 & 64, 73% of this group preferred to purchase their music in CD form rather than digitally over the internet.

To me this figure comes as a bit of a shock, personally we have pretty much entirely switched our music purchasing to online usually using iTunes and sometimes other digital/online methods. In fact I can’t even remember the last CD that we actually purchased? To me the thought of going to a music store and buying a CD is a purchase method that is long gone. Give me the ease of a click of a mouse for this method of getting my music any-day. This way it’s already in the best format for what I use, and that is to transfer it between my digital devices such as other computers/iphone/ipod etc, and if I need to make a CD then I burn one (haven’t done this for quite some time either).

My music purchasing behaviour has probably changed though since it became so easy to buy music over the internet in the sense that I only purchase the songs I want. I have not actually bought a whole album in this way, maybe because I don’t feel the need to buy songs that I don’t particularly like. It would seem that digital downloads are used by record companies in a similar way to what concerts were in the past, as a marketing & promotional tool. Record companies would throw concerts and tours to promote record sales, maybe this is the new way for them to promote the purchase of full CD albums?!?

Whatever is going on out there by looking at history it is pretty safe to say that one day the CD will be obsolete, and probably as we move into an age where GEN Y’s and Millennial’s get greater purchasing power their impatience and the need to ‘have it now’ will probably see digital sales grow to be the way of the future. So while I definitely believe that one of these days the CD will go the way of Vinyl records and cassette tapes, the day hasn’t quite arrived as early as I thought.

How do you choose to purchase your music? Do you have some thoughts about these purchase behaviour changes? If so leave a comment!!!