One of the things I’ll always remember doing at Starbucks while I waited to order was flipping through the CD rack.

Sometimes you would find new artists like Taylor Swift or Selena Gomez, or other times you would see a Paul McCartney album. Either way, it was something that kept you occupied before you had a chance to order. But now that opportunity will be gone as Starbucks will stop selling CDs at the end of February, according to The Atlantic.

As we all know the music industry has declined recently as people download music online for free or use applications like Pandora or Spotify. Though Starbucks has valid reasoning to stop selling CDs, it is still disappointing to see something we used so often in the early 2000s be thrown to the side soon to be dubbed “obsolete.”

Starbucks not selling CDs anymore may not be a big deal to casual customers, but in the music industry it is a slap in the face. In a world that is rapidly becoming increasingly digital, how are physical discs supposed to compete? I cannot imagine trying to put my foot into the music industry today due to how hard it is to make a living there.

Sometimes I sit down and look at my younger family members on their tablets and iPhones and am amazed at how different their childhood is compared to mine. While I was crying over missing Pokémon on Saturday, they, now, can easily stream shows to watch later. But I, too, am part of the digital world. The last CD I clearly remember buying was Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III,” which came out in 2008. After that, I was introduced to LimeWire and Napster and never bought a CD again.
I don’t think that it is possible to stop ourselves from being drawn to the new and shiny devices that Apple and Google place in front of us but I do hope we don’t forget about the little things that once made up the music industry.