Why CD players so expensive when the fomat is dead

3000 CDs and counting...use a MAC pro and dac/headphone amp for my headphone rig. CD dead ? - what a laugh. Its a format that will be around for atleast another 20 years in some way or another. If the downloading crap takes off bigtime with audiophiles... the ones resisting the change will still be able to buy CDs on Ebay and the net for decades to come if they are happy with the sound.

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CD format dead? . . . That means I am now officially a perverted and obsessive necrophiliac? Oh my goodness. . . and my Mom thought she raised me to be a good boy!

LOL!!!

Here's what I found at this web page:
http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/music-stats-for-2009-fab-four-king-of-pop-among-top-selling-artists-11620/nielsen-music-sales-highlights-type-2009png/

For 2009 in the US:

295,000,000 cds were sold
76,400,000 digital download albums were sold
2,500,000 vinyl LPs were sold

Single track digital downloads were 1.16 billion

So I'd say the cd is still doing OK.

tomcy6 et. al.: what the industry doesn't, and cannot accurately measure, is the number of free legal and illegal downloads--i've read guesttimates that these number in the tens of billions annually, which dwarfs cd sales. these free downloads are the exclusive source of music for entire generations, and many bands whose cd releases don't even register on the billboard charts are actually downloaded and circulated in the millions. add this to the fact that, walmart excepted, most of the big bricks-and-mortar cd sources have died (tower, circuit city, virgin, etc.) or on the verge of folding (e.g. barnes & noble) and it doesn't really bode well for future sales of actual, tangible cds. it seems inevitable that very soon conventional cd sales will become the exclusive province of a few big online purveyors and and the odd, tiny hole-in-the-wall local merchants and that downloads will be the overwhelmingly dominant source of music consumption. kinda sad--i'll really miss browsing in record stores.

I'm an ol'school LP & CD guy (who'dathunk CD's would ever be considered "old school?!). I certainly moan & miss the old days of plentiful physical outlets for buying music BUT....I think you may be not be seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak. While you absolutely are correct about the death of being able to buy music in stores, I wouldn't JUST single music out. With the advent of on-line consumerism, I believe that malls will be a thing of the past within a few generations. Look around, before I'd seen a dearth of stores closing everywhere, NOW I see whole malls not being used. We can discuss whether this trend is good, bad, or indifferent (personally, I think it sucks!) but it is what it is.