EMI says CD is dead, public says it’s not

Walk down any random street and there’s a good chance you’ll bump into someone bobbing their head to a music phone or an MP3 player (most likely an iPod of some sort). You will be hard pressed to find anyone rocking a portable CD player. Does that mean the optical music format is dead? According to EMI Music’s CEO, yes, it does.

In his own words, “The CD as it is right now is dead,” given the relative ease that people have grabbing digital tracks off the internet from services like Napster and iTunes. An ongoing poll over at Gizmodo, however, begs to differ.

At the time this article was posted, visitors were split pretty evenly between “I’ve completely abandoned physical discs”, “I still use CDs regularly”, and “Somewhere in between”. Bear in mind that people who frequent tech blogs (like Mobile Magazine) are typically early adopters, so what this means is that Joe Public is probably even more CD-loving than the poll may indicate.