CDs may soon go the way of vinyl
In the 1950s, the revolution was all about rock 'n' roll. The 70s brought punk and disco. And sometime this decade, the rebellion shifted from the music genre to the digital domain.
Signaling a new era of media distribution, Forrester Research on Tuesday released a study predicting an even bigger drop in compact disc sales as Internet music file-sharing keeps gaining ground on the flagging CD.
Twenty years after its introduction, the CD is no longer hip. From 2001 to 2002, Nielsen SoundScan estimates that 62.5 million fewer were sold -- a 9 percent drop to 649.5 million. Plummeting CD sales have forced record shops to close. And the music industry is scrambling to lift sales -- fueling the growth of new digital music services and suing hard-core file sharers.
