Out

So, CD-players are "out". Not only out, but they are hardly even available in the shops.

I woke up to this fact when I was trying to look for a small bedside radio-cum-CD-player to replace my old radio. I had in mind those portable ones - perhaps an updated version of those radio-plus-tape-and-CD-playing combos that used to be very popular a few years ago.

I checked a number of shops and, to my horror, none of them had such products anymore! Instead, there were many alarm-plus-radio-cum-i-pod / i-phone-players - what people apparently put on their bedside these days.

It appears then that the market expects everyone to have at least an i-pod or an i-phone. Perhaps that is right - when even the Queen uses i-pod, so should everyone else, shouldn't it. In a recent visit to the UK, Michelle Obama gave the Queen an i-pod loaded with specially selected songs as a present. As Michelle Obama is a fashion icon these days, nothing can be more symbolic of the apparent fact that "CD-players are out" than her choice of present to the Queen.

In the end, I managed to find one radio-cum-CD-player set, of some unknown brand, at Fotomax (!). As I couldn't be bothered to load the contents of all my CDs to an i-pod or an mp3-player or a memory stick, and would quite simply like to play a CD directly, I bought the set. It works fine. However, its existence in my room reminds me, constantly, of the "generation gap" between myself and my own generation. What irony.

And for that matter, I think CDs will also be out before long - we may only be able to buy mp3 songs, probably to be loaded to our i-pods at the shops on payment. CDs go to the musuems.