About 50 percent of teenagers didn't buy a single CD in 2007.
This fact didn't surprise me in the least, but it surprised my editor, who in absolutely no way could be considered old and out-of-touch with technology.
So when she saw the above statistic in a wire story and asked me if I could believe it, I said yes because I don't know a single person (well except my editor, who picked up Thriller 25 last month for her husband for Valentine's Day, and my college roommate, who has insane artist loyalty) who still buys CDs.
To me CDs are a thing of the past, replaced with downloaded MP3s.
And to those "compact" discs, I say good riddance. I don't miss my music skipping in my supposedly skip-proof Discman every time I hit a bump on roadtrips. I don't miss lugging the not-really-heavy-but-still-really-annoying-to-hold Discman on runs. I don't miss being locked into one artist for the duration because I didn't have a CD burner on my computer to make mixes.
I openly embrace the wonderfulness that is my iPod -- so lightweight and with a travel case that I can strap to my arm when I run. I love listening to iTunes on my computer and crafting new mixes so my library never seems to get old, even though I am terrible at downloading new songs to update it.
And with all that fun tech stuff, it just makes sense teenagers aren't buying CDs anymore. It's frustrating spending close to $20 on a full album when you only end up liking about three songs. I'd rather spend $3 on iTunes for just the stuff I like.
To be quite frank, with all the illegal programs out there, I'm surprised anyone pays any amount for music at all. I suppose some of us have a conscience about these things (and I'm in no way suggesting everyone start stealing music), but I was really surprised when I read that 42 percent of music is paid for. I had really expected that number to be a lot lower.
When I was in college, everyone downloaded and not through iTunes, unless maybe you got a gift card.
So for me the surprise factor was how much people still pay for music, not the format that music came in.
I, indeed, am not old. However, for full disclosure purposes, I thought you should know that I don't even own an iPod. I have never downloaded music. I still sometimes listen to mix tapes I made in the 90s. OK, so maybe I'm a kinda old. ;)
Out of about 25 students in my class at school there are only 3 people who still pay for music. I am one of them. I did actually (at one point) illegally download tracks but then I switched to iTunes mainly because of my conscience. And now, amazingly, I find that I actually enjoy listening to the tracks I buy more than the tracks I illegally downloaded - which I didn't expect at all. I guess I am just more grateful for what I have.
Long live iTunes!