Report: By 2020, One-third of New Cars Will Have CD Players; Why?
According to automotive experts, the in-dash CD player’s days may be numbered in new cars. Also, water is wet, and orange juice made from oranges.
The Telegraph reports that roughly one-third of new cars sold in the UK by the end of the decade will have a CD player, with many of those physical media players being optional extras.
About 3 out of 4 new cars come with some sort of USB connectivity as standard, according to the newspaper, which means there are many people who are opting for a USB connector AND CD player in their car today. Wait, why?
According to Bloomberg News, 24 percent of cars sold last year in the U.S. didn’t have a CD player and nearly 50 percent of new cars sold here in 2021 won’t have the option to spin its own discs.
Nearly a year ago, The Atlantic declared the CD was dead and that digital music sales isn’t much further behind. Considering that most people nowadays stream music, it’s hard to conceive why automakers will hold onto CD players for at least 5 more years — but I’m wrong a lot.
Would you want a CD player in your new car?
More by Aaron Cole
Comments
Join the conversation
How am I supposed to "stream" music all day long without incurring data surcharges? I need to at least be in physical possession of the music files so that I can Bluetooth it all day long. That takes time; for albums where I like most songs, a CD player is still convenient. For artists where I only care for individual songs, I keep them on my phone. That said, my wife's newest car has no CD player and I'm fine with that.
CD player is a must have for me. MP3 sucks as a music format really, and streaming isn't viable in a moving vehicle. I don't even stream music at home. In my new car I can connect my phone via bluetooth (sound quality is poor) or via USB, but I generally don't. My daughter loves that however.
There are two kinds of people: There are those that understand there are other people who don't give a flip about the same stuff that they do, and there are people who don't. You can stick a bunch of labels on people for belonging to the second group. None of them are positive.
You know, not everyone has oodles of time to sit in Mom's basement and fiddle with computers to convert perfectly good CDs to other formats. Here is an incomplete list of the things I would rather be doing than converting CDs to other formats just to avoid the slot in the dashboard: - having sex - reading - meditating - playing music - sleeping - working (you know, at my job, where I bring home noney) - exercising - thinking about having sex - praying - cleaning the toilet - wishing I were having sex - etc.