Want to go out in person and buy that quaintest of relics, an actual CD of a classical recording? Try anywhere but Manhattan. There are reports that J&R, the independent shop with the largest remaining dedicated classical department in the city, may be about to shut its specialist section (the sign on the door currently says merely "closed for renovations"; there are worrying signs that the whole store may be in its death throes). As it has seemed for the past couple of decades, the demise of physical product, especially in classical rather than pop, while apparently inevitable, has never quite come to the total-compact-disc-cataclysm that many have predicted. People - even if admittedly fewer of them - still want to buy physical product; the problem is knowing where to find it, apart from online.

In London, thanks to the brilliant Harold Moores Records and the genius of Gramex, there are still at least a couple of dedicated places with knowledgeable staff to go for new and second-hand classical releases, while we still have a classical section in Foyles and the - alas! - ever-reducing collection stocked by HMV, as well as smaller departments here and there.

But in New York, according to WQXR, Gotham residents have only the shop at the Metropolitan Opera, the Juilliard Store, Barnes and Noble at Union Square, and the used offerings of Academy on West 18th Street.

Given the massive availability, as never before, of so much repertoire through streaming services, not to mention what's out there on YouTube, lamenting the passing of the browsing era in shops might seem like mere nostalgia for my own teenage years spent in Tower Records on Argyll Street in Glasgow, in my case, figuring out whether to buy Boulez's Webern or Jochum's Bruckner. (Crazy days eh?) But there's an ironic twist to the supposed last days of classical product: according to Nielsen Soundscan, in the US last year, sales of vinyl - vinyl! - jumped by 30% to six million units. Vinyl, often beautifully packaged, limited-edition vinyl, is resurgent in the UK too. The CD might be going the way of the dinosaur - but long live the new (old) flesh!