Streaming killed the CD in-car: but car makers should listen to the Swifties

The last new car on sale with a built-in CD player has now disappeared from UK showrooms, but a resurgence in CD sales has led retailers to suggest car makers are turning their backs on music fans.

Nowadays, new cars rely on streaming services and drivers’ own connected devices to supply tunes when they don’t want to listen to the radio. The last model to feature a CD player was the Subaru Forester, which went off sale earlier this year.

However, according to the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA): “Car manufacturers should listen to the Swifties and give the CD another chance.” It points to its own survey data that shows 15 per cent of the UK’s adult population still listen to CDs in their cars, which amounts to around seven million individual drivers.

While CD sales have fallen dramatically from a high point of 170 million in 2004 to just 11.4 million last year, ERA claims there has been a recent rebound in interest for the format, just as with vinyl, which has reported increasing sales for 18 years on the trot.

The organisation’s CEO Kim Bayley accuses car makers of a lack of foresight. “Car makers seem to be looking through the rear-view mirror when it comes to CDs,” said Bayley. “The lesson of vinyl is that you should never write off a music format. Even today, 50 per cent more people say they listen to music on CD as on vinyl,” she added. 

“Taylor Swift is leading the way. The 172,000 CDs sold in the UK this year of her latest album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is more than the three biggest-selling cars in the UK last year combined. Car manufacturers should listen to the Swifties and give the CD another chance.”

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