Climate change eradicates humanity long before the CD cases are broken down into their base elements. The booklets disintegrate and the plastic begins to slowly decompose. But the CDs never sell, and after a while they end up in landfill. This repeats as bulk lots are shifted from reseller to reseller. The CDs remain in warehouses just outside Shenzhen, the ebay listings untouched. Soon enough the op-shops, inundated with copies of an album no one's ever heard of - let alone care enough about to pay $2 for - give up on trying to sell copies of it as individual units, and include them in bulk lots that are offloaded to Chinese ebay merchants. Maybe Ute will have another album in a few years that's picked up in the same fashion, but for the moment she goes back to whatever artsy-fartsy theatrical bubble she came from. Meanwhile, the wider public remains mostly unaware of this album's existence.
The corporate world then forgets about Ute Lemper because Norah Jones has a new album out, it's lounge jazz covers of Soundgarden songs and for some reason, hotel chain executives think that is a good idea. It spends its 30 days of patronage on repeat in hotel lobbies and art gallery gift shops, and afterwards it ends up in op-shops. The "corporate communications" departments at outfits like the Marriott Group approve it as album of the month, and this moves a few hundred thousand units. This kind of cabaret-muzak tripe owes 99% of its sales to business entities.