RSSThe Compact Disc Celebrates 25 Years
By Ed Oswald | Published August 17, 2007, 11:33 AM
Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc. However, is there much time left for the format in the age of the digital download?
The first CDs rolled off an assembly line on August 17, 1982 with a copy of Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony. It was hailed as the next big thing in music, replacing the cassette tape and vinyl LP as the de facto format for many music aficionados.
The CD medium offered many benefits over its predecessors. One of the most notable benefits was its usable shelf life -- far longer than tape or LP. Some even argue that the sound quality of the CD is better than either format, although that is a point of contention between many.
So who created the CD? As the story goes, Philips began researching optical audio technology in the 1970s. From there, Sony would join the effort in 1979 and both sides worked to get out a standard the following year.
The CD got its design from the shape of a record, although how it got its size its in debate. Some said its was made just big enough to hold Beethoven's 9th Symphony, while others say it was the size of a Dutch beer coaster.
By 1982, the format was ready for mass production. Players would go on sale that fall, and were a near instant success. This would be accelerated by the launch of Sony's first Discman two years later. By 1986, sales of CD players would eclipse record players, and two years later, CD sales outpaced records.
Sales of CDs would peak at 2001 at 712 million, around the time that peer-to-peer file sharing services became widely popular. Within five years, sales have dropped nearly a quarter.
The question many are asking now is whether the digital download may eclipse the CD as more consumers turn to their iPods and other digital media devices.
"The MP3 and all the little things that the boys and girls have in their pockets ... can replace it, absolutely," Pieter Kramer, head of Philip's optical research division in the 1970s, told the Associated Press in an interview.
CD is still going strong in many parts of the world. In fact CD is still the dominant format for Audio and Video content delivery, for example Thailand and Vietnam. Vinyl has made a huge come back. I feel there will always be people that want to own audio on a disc. MP3 is just one new format in a ever fragmenting world of entertainment format choices.
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Am I wrong or the first CD ever produced the August 17, 1982 was "The Visitors" by ABBA?
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The first CD was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street.
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No, ABBA was first (17th of August 1982). What is incredible the CD was pressed 6 weeks before first CD players were offered.
Billy Joel's"52nd Streed" was added for free to all CDP-101s sold in Japan and the States which hit the market on the 1st of October (Japan).
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But I thought Sony created proprietary formats...
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Not when they're the junior partner.
Philips invented almost all the audio stuff from compact cassettes to CD.
.....and if you look into the history of CD you'll see Sony even shafted Philips over the disc sizes.
Same old same old.
"According to a Sunday Tribune interview, the story is slightly more involved. At that time (1979) Philips owned Polygram, one of the world’s largest distributors of music. Polygram had set up a large experimental CD plant in Hanover, Germany, which could produce huge amounts of CDs having, of course, a diameter of 115 mm.
Sony did not yet have such a facility.
If Sony had agreed on the 115 mm disc, Philips would have had a significant competitive edge in the market.
Sony was aware of that, did not like it, and something had to be done. The long-playing time of Beethoven's Ninth imposed by Ohga was used to push Philips to accept 120 mm, so that Philips’ Polygram lost its edge on disc fabrication."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD
(I'm surprised this is still there to be read what with the way their shills & liars have tried to edit the unpleasant details about BD+ on Wiki)
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What about the 8-track?
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From the original article:
"Exactly 25 years ago tomorrow, on August 17, 1982, Royal Philips Electronics manufactured the world's first compact disc at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, just outside of Hanover, Germany."
http://news.ecoustics.co...sages/10381/379607.html
How come Betanews left those details out? Oh right, so they could play up the "So who created the CD? As the story goes..." thing and maybe stir up a nice fanboy flame war, they do seem to love those here. :P
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There is no debate. Phillips of Holland invented the first optical disc. However, I do agree with you that Betanews seems to love flame wars. The moderation effort exercised in this forum is pathetic, at best.
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Vinyl is still around so the chances of cd being replaced completely by digital, its not going to happen anytime soon.
Most people I know still buy cds and they have an mp3 player as well, the cd becomes the backup basically. Also, maybe its just me but if I only like one song from an artist its not worth my time to spend the money. I would much rather buy music from an artist with a cd worth of songs.
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Vinyl is around but it's really a small niche. You can't walk into Wal-Mart and buy vinyl, nor would most people want to. As for CDs the best use they still have is as a source and not just a backup. Ripping songs from your own CDs means you get the best quality possible and no DRM. Most of the music you buy online is crap quality at best. As the quality of the online music improves though I expect CDs will eventually fade away.
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Also - to show my age - I remember my first CD player - I purchased it in 1985. Finding anyone who sold CDs was a little difficult - most stores still only sold tapes and records (I lived in a rural town - we were always last to get anything).
When Columbia modified their program to allow you to get CDs instead of tapes/records - I was elated - switching over was great (ended up with a lot of CDs I really didn't want - just like the tapes/records ). But that was how I got most of my music.
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I think the other reason that the CD (and album sales as a whole) is dead is that people no longer want to pay for something they will never use.
I look at how many CDs I have in my collection with songs that I probably listened to once and never did again because they were not to my taste.
I tended to buy collections of songs by various artists, so that I got the songs I wanted. Even then they snuck some lame song on there just to get it sold.
I've been waiting for this for a long time. I had an idea back in the 90's to have IBM (just because they were the biggest company that I thought could pull it off) to set up kiosks in the Mall where you could pick the songs you wanted and have them download via satellite and burn to a CD. They slap on a printed label and off you go. Now you have your mix collection with no added garbage.
iTunes and the like services have made this more or less a reality - no longer do we have to spend $12+ for a single song. If there is an album we want, we can still buy it (by the song) and I'm sure we'll see that the music sites might just make it worth while to buy the whole album rather than each song individually if you want more than say ten of them. (if they aren't doing this already - show's you how much I listen to music anymore ).
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CDs are too large and hold too little. They were amazing in the 80's and early 90s but when the time came that you could buy a digital music player the size of a stick of gum that can hold thousands of songs the CD suddenly looks like a huge dinosaur.
When I was in grade school I got a Speak and Math one year, and listening to the voice samples I wondered why they couldn't just put music on a computer chip. So that was my prediction, that someday you would go to a store and buy music on small integrated chips and plug them into a player like you did with Atari cartridges. Ok, so it didn't turn out exactly that way but I had the right idea. My friends thought my idea was stupid by the way and storing music on a chip would never be possible.
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If the two of us had gotten together then, we could have made a fortune!
I'm still waiting for an e-bookstore. One where you can go in at anytime and get any book ever published downloaded to a real reader (I think Sony has a nice one now - too pricey, but it'll get there - if they don't kill it. And Amazon is coming out with one supposedly).
That would be the cats meow.
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Books will never go away completely - the tactile experience of holding a book is something an e-reader doesn't give.
As for CD - putiing music in DVD format is probably the only thing that will kill them off - like 3.5 floppies killed 5.25. mp3s will certainly never do it - no one who wants fidelity does anything with mp3s other than use them while riding a bike or jogging.
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They already tried DVD-Audio and SACD, both formats flopped.
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People would probably be more willing to buy into high resolution audio if they had the video to go along with it. This is why HD-DVD is selling so much better than either format. Also, the cost of getting real SACD audio was prohibitive on the consumer side. Most players that fell into the budget price range converted the audio to PCM before it got to the receiver. Since DSD is of much higher quality than even the best DVD-Audio discs this meant a budget SACD player's audio didn't sound much better than the same music on CD. In order to get a real SACD audio player that could output DSD audio you had to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Maybe this will change if manufacturers ever start releasing SACD players with HDMI 1.2 or later.
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"In order to get a real SACD audio playe that could output DSD audio you had to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars."
Probably because SACD is a Sony format. Ick.
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Actually flash MP3 players seem to be taking off more than the HDD players. I'm seeing more players that support SD cards. The Cowon D2 is my favorite, I'm thinking of getting it. It's a 4gb MP3/Video player that supports SD (and SDHC, newer cards that can get upto 32gb's). It also has a touch screen and also supports Flash Lite. Someone already made a caclulator for it.
I'm also seeing more and more things supporting SD like recievers, mini stereo's, my TV (for pictures though) and other things. I think that's kind of cool. You have your music on your SD card and you can play it on your MP3 player, your stereo and if they maybe even put them in car stereo's (I don't know if they've done that yet though).
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Yeah, But Latz, the artists aren't doing much more than 8 to 12 songs so there would be no need for a larger format CD. Some of the CDs you buy today have 5 songs on them. I presume the CDA format takes up lotsa space too. I agree with you that music should be on a chip, I have been saying that for years.
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I have a Sony car stereo that has a USB port plus an SD slot which is brilliant!
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