> I find it irritating when I visit my local folk club or go to a concert where most of the audience are of a "certain age"(Gregg Wallace) and the compere or artists comes out with a naff comment such as "Do any of you still have a CD player?"!

I've experienced this as well many times in the US, and in my opinion, many artists who come out with mildly insufferable takes like this do so in an effort to be 'quirky' or bohemian. Or similarly, when they proudly announce -- "I started releasing music back in the paleolithic days, when we released music on cassettes -- do any of you even know what that is anymore?!?!" No fans actually ever find it funny. It's a very weak and cringeworthy way of trying to get the crowd involved at best. It makes you look like an annoying contrarian at worst.

If you are selling CDs, why denigrate the media you're actively staking a portion of your livelihood to? Or if people are buying them, why put down your own listeners are anachronistic? Maybe there's a small chance it enlivens a person in the audience to make a stand, say: "You know what? I still purchase physical media and will do so because of those comments!" But minus that likely edge case, it makes no sense to me.

Like others above, I have over a thousand CDs, vinyls (mostly LPs, though I do have a smattering of 45s and 78s), and cassettes. No 8-tracks or reel-to-reels, though. In general, physical media is king for a reason, and I am particularly taken by MaJoC's quote about the resilience of dead trees.

Two final rambling thoughts to end my wandering message:

One: a local college-aged band several of my friends quite enjoyed and saw live many times recently broke up. The band did release several albums, but they were all online-only, with no known physical CDs. When they dissolved, they removed all of their songs from streaming services. While some music is meant to be ephemeral in nature, their fans sure do miss that there's now no way to ever again hear the band they supported live for a half-dozen years.

Two: I've recently started getting ads on several of the social media sites (though mainly Instagram -- I may be outing my age a bit here) for CD-exclusive non-streaming releases by smaller bands. It's particularly pumped up for Christmas, I suspect as an attempt to create a neat selling point for your musically-inclined friend, but I do hope the trend maintains itself.