Is this what the Mayan’s were predicting all those years ago? That longtime friend the CD would be dead by the end of 2012?

Surely this is the doomsday we’ve all been preparing for as music enters a world where virtually no physical copies are sold anyone. Sure, we all knew this day would eventually come. Hell, they’ve already taken our cassettes and they’ve taken our mini-discs from those who bothered.

Ok, so the Mayans didn’t actually predict the demise of the compact disc, but that hasn’t stopped plenty of others taking a shot. According to Side Line Music Magazine, the major labels are gearing up to pretty much halt CD production by the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. Reports from those within the major label machine say that majors plan on replacing the discs with streaming and digital downloads.

Limited Edition’s will continue to be produced on CD as collectors items but in a much smaller capacity and only for major artists. They expect wide-scale CD production to halt sometime in 2012.

Not everyone is so sure that we’ll see the death of the world’s most popular music format so soon however. Billboard, who do the album charts in the US think that perhaps we’re being a bit premature saying “there is no major label plan to abandon the CD format by the end of 2012. A major corporation isn’t going to take such incredibly drastic measure. Can you imagine what the recorded music divisions of EMI or Warner Music Group would fetch if they stopped selling CDs?”

The LA Times did some  of their own investigative journalism on the subject and found that up to 75% of US music sales in 2012 were made through the purchase of Compact Discs. In some genres the figure was even higher: 93% of Latin, 85% of gospel and 84% of country records were all physical discs.

So what do you think? Are we ready to see the CD go the way of the Dodo?

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