Actually if it's digital audio the present is files too. CDs contain files. Hard drives, flash storage, etc are also containers for files. Even a SACD contains files but in a vastly different format than CDs and requiring very different handling. They all require some physical storage. What you are searching for is: the distribution system and the physical file storage are moving towards no longer being the same thing. For young people that appears to already be true. IMHO that is a very good thing for the ecology of our planet.
Count me in for Ore and Dunlap. That was the first Monk I ever heard, on Two Hours With Thelonious (a 2LP repackaging of the Riverside France and Italy recordings, picked up for like $.57 from a J.M. Fields cutout bin in the early 70's).