In an article about digital music, Wired editor Nancy Miller proclaimed the CD to be "dead and gone" and advised record labels on how best to sell their products. "At a certain point record companies are going to have to go with what is the cheapest way of distribution, and that's digital," she said.

That's especially funny because the previous paragraphs had quotes from record store owners -- the people that sell CDs -- that pained a different, more realistic picture. For example:

I really wasn't concerned with loss of sales because Radiohead is the kind of band whose fans want the physical album as well," said Lee Wolfson, owner of independent Tampa music shop Vinyl Fever. "I knew we'd sell plenty of the CDs when it became available.

Some people -- maybe not the Wired crowd who live in a digital silo -- still want and purchase CDs. Some consumers still want a physical product, and music companies and retailers are still very much in the business of selling physical product.

No, the CD is not dead. Sales are down, true, and many retailers are shifting floor space to other products. But the CD is far from dead. According to RIAA figures, 511 million CDs (net) were shipped last year.

Journalists are too dazzled by the efficiencies of digital distribution and tend to ignore the diversity of consumer preferences. Music distribution is not one single, cheapest route. Wired blogger Eliot Van Buskirk said as much when Radiohead signed a deal to release the CD version of In Rainbows, the album that originally got a tip-jar release. While the digital release grabbed on the headlines, "there's still a great deal of money to be made by letting unconnected music fans purchase this album," he wrote. (Truth be told, it's not just the unconnected fans who are buying physical formats.) Heck, Van Buskirk has even written about vinyl's resurgence. C'mon, Wired. Now we're up to two physical formats that are obviously not "dead and gone."

Labels, keep on pressing CDs and LPs. Physical products and physical distribution are not going to go extinct any time soon. Retail will continue to be gloomy but there will be outlets to sell your physical product, and there will continue to be distributors to get your product into those stores. The bottom line is nobody should mistake digital adoption for complete physical abandonment.

[music jobs] HR Manager at EMI NA; New York, NY.