Best Buy Is Pulling All CDs From Stores, And People Are Losing Their Damn Minds

Is this a millennial-made travesty or a sign of the times?

Brandon Friederich

Feb 6, 2018

Vinyl may be experiencing a resurgence, but its successor is on its way out.

Best Buy announced that they are pulling all compact discs from stores on July 1. You’ll no longer be able to sift through $5-bins brimming with heaping piles of classic albums from Led Zeppelin, Public Enemy and Pearl Jam, or even pick up the latest T-Swift CD—not that you’d ever consider doing so.

Billboard has further details:

At one point, Best Buy was the most powerful music merchandiser in the U.S., but nowadays it’s a shadow of its former self, with a reduced and shoddy offering of CDs.

Sources suggest that the company’s CD business is nowadays only generating about $40 million annually.

Target could also be dramatically reducing its inventory if distributors don’t agree to sell CDs on what Billboard calls a “consignment basis.” Essentially, music labels would only receive payment for units sold.

Currently, Target takes the inventory risk by agreeing to pay for any goods it is shipped within 60 days, and must pay to ship back unsold CDs for credit.

With consignment, the inventory risk shifts back to the labels.

Twitter users can’t decide if the disappearance of CDs is another millennial-made travesty or a sign of progress.

Tide Pod munching millennials will continue to stream music and then wonder why their favorite artists can no longer afford to produce new music.

— Kevin Miller (@THEKevinFMiller) February 6, 2018

Blame progress. This is just a newer, better product overtaking an older, worse product. And if you still want CD’s, you can still get and collect them. They’re just not the mainstream popular product that big box chain stores are able to sell

— Brad Domash (@bdomash) February 6, 2018