According to a recent article by Billboard, because CD production has relocated to Mexico, stores haven’t been receiving their shipments on time and can’t keep up with the uptick in demand.

Well, that isn’t entirely true, but with the recent consolidations in the physical media industry, some content that has gone to Mexico to be pressed and then sent back to the U.S. for packaging. This does take additional time and probably isn’t the most cost-effective when you’re moving across borders. This could be also one of the reasons why the brick-and-mortar retailers saw their CD stock of hit titles dwindle to zero while new supplies remained on backorder. In some cases, the CD versions of the titles weren’t even in stores on their release dates.

CD sales have dropped like a sustainably in the first half of the year, according to the RIAA’s mid-year report. The number of CDs shipped in the first half of 2018 decreased by almost 47% to 18.6 million units from 2017. Likewise, revenue was down 41.5% to around $246 million.

The industry will see a pop in sales in the fourth quarter related to the holiday season, but the physical media in comparison to digital streaming is expected to continue to decline by 50% in the next 3-4 years.

The success story of Vinyl demonstrates that there is a value of Physical media in a niche format and like vinyl, there will be those that will always prefer the format compared to streaming.

More at Billboard

Photo: Bryan Ekus