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Reminds me of my old man, wanted to have all his photos "on CD" as late as 2009 or so. Cloud storage was too abstract a concept. That's only started to become less expensive last five years or so, I suppose, but he just couldn't connect the dots.
For better or worse, "compact discs" are at the tail end of the use-curve that every single technology goes through over the arc of human history. Nothing made knights in armor obsolete faster than the use of firearms in combat, for example. The English Longbow did a number on those bastards too, see "Agincourt, Battle of". Never mind.
In a less extreme example, USB and "MP3 ports" are also questionable in terms of obsolescence, if most smartphones can connect via Bluetooth to most car audio systems. Those are two ever-more reasonable assumptions, over time. Given that, if your music is a) on your phone as MP3 and/or b) available for Cloud streaming over WiFi or cellular network, problem solved. Kiss physical media goodbye.
I believe I pay Google about five bucks a month to store my music collection, and stream theirs too. From, uh, anywhere on Earth they have WiFi. Was listening to some of my tunes in Swakopmund, Namibia last fall from my collection, streamed via WiFi from Google Play, on this premise. Ain't technology grand.
There is a reason 8 track tapes, cassettes, floppy discs, and other obsolete trash went into the dustbin of history. CDs are a micrometer away from same. DVDs aren't far behind. And so it goes.
I can stream all the music and photos from my server in the closet anywhere there is WiFi.
Plex. $40.00/year. I should look into Google as well. Thanks for the reminder.
Probably but why bother? Takes little bit of time but if you rip your entire collection you can put it all on a USB stick and have the entire collection at your fingertips.
Just a quick tip if you are going to go through this endeavor. Use a format like WMV lossless or something like FLAC to rip to. These are lossless and will be the equivalent of making exact copy of the audio on disc. From there you can use them as source material and convert in bulk to whatever format you need. Always keep those original files for future use.
My music collection is over a terabyte. I'm guessing in five years or so I can do that.
And they are not a dying technology. The audio CD perhaps, but not the disc itself.
Optical media is toast for a variety of reason. Scratches that corrupt data (although you can buff them), very big compared to say a USB stick that can fit a stack of CD's 20 feet high on it, limits on read speeds... you can only spin that sucker so fast.
Players and drives will probably be around for the next 20 years or so but only for legacy purposes much like they just stopped production on the last VCR's.
Until the next latest and greatest thing comes along to replace it.
Once you rip a file it's "forever", new formats may come along but you can just convert to new format. The only thing that can improve it is higher quality audio file which is one possible avenue for new distribution. Firstly many CD's have been poorly mastered, Google "loudness wars" .
Secondly CD does not perfectly replicate audio recordings. Many years ago they came out with formats like DVD audio which can replicate it to the point it's nearly perfect. That format never caught on because CD was good enough. CD can produce 65K different sounds played at 44K times per second. Compare that to a fDVD audio which has 16 million different sounds played at 192K times per second. It's a big difference.
The only thing that will replace digital audio files are streaming services which are very popular.
There's a free spotify service that works like Pandora on mobile that won't let you pick specific songs(but will use your playlist). The paid version does though. But yeah head units that support it let you fully control it through the head unit.
I assume that if my car only integrates with Pandora and not Spotify, there is no safe way for me to use that feature. And that I have to continue buying music through iTunes, even though people tell me that I'm the last person who still does that.
Fire up those old battery-powered boom boxes, folks!
Google is your friend. back at ya.
My friend had one of the first CD players you could get for a car, it was a Blaupunkt. It probably skipped as much as that that record player. It was so bad he pulls up the one day, gets out his car, puts it on a stump and smashed it with an axe.
Does your BMW have AM mono? I find it hard to believe that a manufacturer has eliminated AM altogether. At least in cars designed for the American market.
I'm surprised they would consider eliminating the radio at all.
Does your BMW have AM mono? I find it hard to believe that a manufacturer has eliminated AM altogether. At least in cars designed for the American market.
Interestingly enough, they did because electric motors cause interference with AM stations.
Looking at new cars and I realized that many don't have CD players but instead they have USB and MP3 ports.
Question: Can I buy a portable CD player that plugs into one of these ports and then plays out over the cars speakers?
I want an 8-track cassette player.
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back at ya. 
