I agree, for serious listeners CDs are the best way to buy music, especially if you're into classical music or jazz (as opposed to the latest popular music). The low prices on CD box sets I see on Amazon are amazing bargains; $1-$2 per CD. I also like being independent of the internet and cloud computing and corporate policies (especially pricing). I also like browsing a shelf better than using a search engine.
IMO, vinyl is just a waste of time and money, unless you already own LPs and just want a means to play them, or you're looking for "the experience". If the latter is what people are looking for, the coolness of the mechanical nature of phonographs, I get it. Totally. I still drive manual transmission vehicles just for the fun of it, even though modern automatics have made manuals inferior in almost every way (except, perhaps, longevity). It amazes me the number of young people (millennials) I bump into getting into vinyl.
I've been listening to a lot of classical music streaming lately from Amazon Prime (256Kbps) on headphones in the office, and I have to say that it sounds very good. I do occasionally hear stuff that makes me wonder about the compression algorithm, like making some background sounds more apparent than on the CD versions I own, but that could be a headphone effect too. Overall, I'm softening up about 256Kbps MP3 audio quality, but if I'm going to purchase I'll always insist on CD resolution or better.