First it was the Walkman, then the iPod. Now car CD players are going the way of the dinosaur.
Not long after General Motors joined the growing list of car manufacturers removing CD players, United Kingdom car manufacturers have announced a similar move.
And the music industry is not happy.
Britain’s Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) CEO Kim Bayley described the move as short-sighted.
She said research showed 15 percent of the UK adult listened to CDs in their cars.
“While these numbers are down on five years ago they amount to around seven million individuals,” she said.
“That equates to around 20 percent of the 34.5 million people with active driving licenses.”
Ms Bayley said, while CD sales had slid over the past 20 years, they had joined vinyl in recent years as part of a surge in packaged music.
“Carmakers seem to be looking through the rear-view mirror when it comes to CDs,” she said. “The lesson of vinyl is you should never write off a music format. Even today 50 percent more people say they listen to music on CD as on vinyl.”
Taylor Swift alone had sold 172,000 copies of The Tortured Poets Department CD in the UK.
Two years ago, General Motors announced that CD players would only be included in a small number of cars in its range.
Forbes reported that only 46 percent of cars still had a CD player by 2021.
Earlier this year Goldman Sachs reported that physical music sales were up 13 percent in 2023. This included a 15 percent jump in CD sales and 14 percent in vinyl albums.
