What a sad world we now live in.......


What a sad world.....

Had to go to our local Wal-Mart for something for the wife and thought would check out CD,s while here.

Could not find them so asked where to be told they had decided to stop selling them in-store.

In fact the whole electronics section looked bare and desolate.

Pretty sure a sign of the buy online times we now live in.
128x128uberwaltz

Showing 2 responses by bdp24

@glupson, you’re last post (at 8:14pm on 05-16) supports my argument that the even the people who were at one time buying their Garth Brooks CD’s at Walmart are just not buying or listening to albums anymore. Is it that they just don’t care that much about music anymore, or don’t hear anything new they like enough to spend ten bucks on, or would rather spend that ten bucks on something else, or work such long hours that they would rather plop down in front of the large-screen TV than listen to music?

I expect that out of my 66 and 68-year old sisters, but I know for a fact that none of their kids or grandkids care all that much about music either. It is my opinion that the couple of generations for whom music was the foremost art form and cultural center was a temporary fluke. My parents and their friends and relatives also weren’t music consumers the way my friends and I were.

As for the music currently being made, while that which you or I may consider cool is still alive on the cult level, it is only Hip Hop/Rap/Dance music that the vast majority of younger music consumers seem to care enough about to support financially. Will that music have remained relevant to it’s buyers when they have reached our current ages (a pole on that range would be interesting!), the way music from the (50’s for some)/60’s/70’s/80’s/90’s/(name your decade ;-) has for us? Michael Fremer regularly talks about how those who get their music via streaming, owning no physical media, will end up with nothing. Holding a physical object that contains music is a completely different thing than holding a remote control. Like Brian Wilson, I just wasn’t made for these times ;-( . Or I lived too long already. I’m starting to feel like Rip Van Winkle may have. It must be doubly so for our comrade @schubert, from whom we rarely hear anymore.

I don’t intend for this to sound judgmental, and I may be mistaken, but I don’t think Walmart customers were ever exactly the most music-loving people around. Or perhaps it is that they, like myself, are just not interested in the music that is currently most popular.

In the retail business, product has to "earn" its’ space on the sales floor. The amount of income generated by every square foot of floor space is analyzed every month or quarter; the product that does not generate the amount of income needed to meet the requirements of the "formula" has its’ floor space reduced until those requirements ARE met.

Music is just not earning its’ keep in Walmart. My two sisters are Walmart customers (I had never been in one until a year ago), and neither would think of buying a CD, or for that matter sitting and listening to an entire album. The people who ARE buying music aren’t doing it at Walmart, and haven’t for a long time.