As I began my holiday music shopping over the weekend, I couldn’t help but notice the ever-dwindling selection of audio compact discs available compared to just a few years ago. It seems like only a matter of time before—much like the vinyl record and cassette tape—there will be no more mall music stores to peruse on the way to the food court. The music aisle at the local "big box" retailer will have long given way to make more room for new interactive games for the Wii.

It made me feel a little nostalgic for the time when the holidays (for a music freak like me, anyway) meant hours and hours of fondling racks and racks of new and classic CDs that music-savvy stores loaded up on in hopes of a huge gift buying demand.

It was the most wonderful time of the year. And now it’s all but gone. At least it is for the CD.

In a decade or so, when the CD is relegated to mostly specialty stores, eBay auctions or that one, last surviving big independent retailer in town (in Houston that's Cactus Music & Record Ranch), will there be nostalgia for albums on CD in the same way that “music geeks” (and I use that term lovingly—you are my peeps) today covet the “olden days” of vinyl records.

Walk-in stores for large music chains like Towers Records, Virgin Megastore and Wherehouse Records have already been relegated to history. Other large retail distributors like Target and Best Buy that still carry CDs have started to consolidate the department in recent years. Soon, it appears they will have little more than a digital kiosk with samples of the new music on sale and purchase options for downloadable USB drives or online voucher codes that allow the music to be downloaded directly into your hard drive.

For anything beyond Lady Gaga, or whoever the top 20 flavor of the moment is, buying music will be something done solely via the Internet or phone app.

So what will become of the CD? Originally hated because it was the shiny, compact and virtually indestructible sound devil that put vinyl on near-extinction alert 20 years ago, the compact disc (as an audio-only medium, anyway) is now facing the same fate.

I still can remember the first CD I ever owned. After holding on to my teenage love of cassettes and vinyl for longer than most and refusing to step into the fancy future of compact discs, I received the Pretty Woman soundtrack as a gift for buying a new state-of-the-art Walkman at Circuit City when I was 18 years old.

I’m not sure what’s the most depressing thing about that last sentence. It could be that my first CD memory includes hits by Roxette and Go West, that I still have that Pretty Woman disc and that it still plays as good as new. It’s possible that it has something to do with the fact that my “Walkman” reference reminded me of my great-grandmother winding up the ol’ Victrola in the parlor for an afternoon of golden oldies. Or that the once monstrous, now out-of-business electronics conglomerate I brought it from is yet another reminder of a bygone music era.

It saddens me that young music minds in training will never know the love of album art or the joy of reading all the liner notes and lyrics from a glossy inlay. But that’s just personal nostalgia talking. However, there is one significant difference about the current sonic baton-passing from CD to digital music that is different from when vinyl gave way to CDs that will affect artists and distribution labels every bit as much as the consumer.

The digital music age has rendered the idea of an album a moot point.

Kids today don’t go online and buy online and buy a $15 full album by Taylor Swift or John Mayer. Why do that when the one or two singles they love can be had for 99 cents apiece?

Even the ones who skip high school Economics can figure out that math.

The tragedy is that this focus on songs rather than album is choking a once-important part of the musical storytelling process out of existence. The notion of building a story arc through song is no longer a requirement for songwriting greatness. If released today, classic albums like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, The Beatles’ white album and (ironically) Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ wouldn’t have nearly the impact on young minds as they did decades ago. They might be appreciated for their individual parts, but not as a whole.

Even worse, as fans stop demanding artistic cohesiveness from musicians for each release, they will stop getting it. It's possible that the greatest ALBUMS have already been made.

The Black Eyed Peas figured this out earlier this year when they released “The E.N.D.” Instead of bothering with the notion of album, the hip-hop dance trio touted their new release as a package of singles that could be bought together... or not. Bypassing the conventional procedure of releasing one single at a time and working it on radio for maximum exposure, B.E.P. instead released three songs as pre-single promotional tools before “The E.N.D.” even hit stores.

The result: “The E.N.D.” was a No. 1 album and was one of only nine “albums” to sell more than a million copies this year in the U.S.

The plus side is that top-selling artists who want to continue to be top-selling artists won’t be able to mail in a half-dozen mediocre songs to fill out an album anchored by one or two strong singles. There will be more pressure than usual on artists to deliver nothing but hits in hopes of making it more tantalizing to young buyers to buy the whole package ("package" is a more appropriate word for this new music business model than "album") of songs instead of just one single at a time.

I guess that’s not bad. Just different.

Still, there’s something about that new CD smell I don’t think I can ever give up. I have been more accepting of the digital music conversion than I was the last time my music changed formats as a teen. For those really special albums, however, I will still purchase them as CDs… then I'll go home and rip the contents into my laptop and iPod.