Lest you think we shy away from the constant pronouncements of doom and gloom in the music world, the LA Times brings us the news today that according to the same report by market research firm NPD that placed iTunes at #2, 48% of teenagers surveyed bought no CDs at all in 2007. While this in itself would be problematic enough -- teenagers are notoriously easy to market toward and tend to be more engaged with music than many adults -- the real issue is that those buying habits (or lack thereof) will probably not change a bit by the time they hit young adulthood, and any potential sales from that first-real-job period so ripe with disposable income will probably go elsewhere. In other words, pretty soon these kids are going to grow up and really control the digital economy.

The good news that keeps us going is that online retail still promises an unprecedented breadth of connection: more buyers, more sellers, and more transactions, even if the totals tend to stay somewhere south of triple-platinum. Squabbles over the specifics of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray aside, Bill Gates himself has said that we're more or less already upon the days of the last physical media format ever.

So get your stuff online already! With each passing day, it makes progressively less sense to have digital material that is not available over the internet -- like CDs, for example -- unless you're talking about huge, ultra high-definition, top-modern media formats.

But on that note, remember that we sell FLAC, too...

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