A Guardian piece follows the recent shutdown of one of Britain’s retail music chains and its larger impact on the music industry’s constantly shifting business model. The good news is that specialty record shops are hopping, as collector’s vinyl, limited releases, and obscure bands still sell well; it’s the “supermarket-style” retailers that are biting the dust. And the CD still has tangible value:

“Certainly, the CD remains a superior product to any digital alternatives: cheaper, easy to rip and burn, secure and coming with all the added peripherals such as cover, liner notes and lyrics. They also have a tangible value. If you filled a 80GB iPod, costing £229, with tracks purchased direct from Apple at 79p a time (an exercise that could potentially cost around £15,800, not that anyone would ever do it) then the player itself would still be worth no more than £229. At least you can flog an unwanted CD on eBay.”