Brief - The Hustle

CDs are finally on their way out at Best Buy

Written by Wes Schlagenhauf | Jun 30, 2020 8:35:09 AM

Best Buy just announced that, as of July 1, they will give up on selling compact discs completely.

Amidst the news, many rom-heads, presumably looking to complete their collection of remastered early aughts rap-metal albums (Crazytown, anyone? No??), took to Twitter to express their feelings of betrayal at the hand of the big blue polos at corporate. 

Ending an era

Sadly, from a business perspective it makes sense. With streaming services like Apple and Spotify making up 62% of US music revenue, it’s crazier that it hasn’t happened already. 

For perspective, in 2001, north of 800m CDs were sold in the US — in 2017, just 89m.

Well, at least Target is still — oh, wait…

Yup, looks like the red polos could be next to 86 CDs from their entertainment sections — but not without fighting the good fight.

According to Billboard, Target has “demanded” music suppliers sell to them on a consignment basis, meaning Target would pay labels only for the CDs customers buy, and not have to deal with the headache of unsold merch.

And, of course vinyl is still seeing a major resurgence… that’s kind of like a giant CD, right?