18 
30 years ago today, a game-changing pair of products were announced: Billy Joel’s 52nd Street on Compact Disc, and the Sony CDP-101, the first device to be able to play it. And the age of the CD was born.
A joint effort of Phillips and Sony, which had both been working independently on different versions of the tech throughout the 70s, the little 12cm wide cyber-records started making their mark on the world right from the start, particularly by dragging the music industry into the digital age. The CD was only ever intended to be a replacement for traditional records, but in June of 1985, the CD-ROM was born, really cementing the disc’s place in modern day life.
Now, 30 years later, the CD is mostly on its way out. Physical music purchases are being cannibalised by downloading — which itself is being cannibalised by streaming — and plenty of people are actually turning back to vinyl if they want to buy an actual thing. It seems doubtful anyone will be collecting CDs years down the line, but even if no one is interested in your old Vanilla Ice CDs, the form-factor lives on with other optical discs, and for a lot of us, the term “CD” is still synonymous with “album.”
So here’s to you, Compact Disc. Happy 30th birthday. We’ll be seeing you around, if not in stores than at least in a shoebox in the closet, hopefully next to the one with the Disc Doctor. [The Next Web, Wikipedia]
Image by Design56/Shutterstock
I still remember it’s introduction. The explanations of how it worked on “Tomorrow’s World” where they spread Marmalade on a disc to show that it would still play. The hugely expensive CD players in the shops (only available as HI-Fi separates initially) and the pathetic selection of available discs (Dire strait’s Brothers in Arms and classical music mostly). It were all tree’s round ‘ere then.
Good Pub trivia bit that. First music CD to sell one million copies
Yeah, because a) this was the 80′s and b) it was the only non classical one you could get. It’s like Avatar being the best selling 3D disc, simply because it was given away free with loads of 3D TV’s.
Really? My brother had that, he had the first CD player I ever used and that was the first disc I ever played. Mind = blown.
I’ve got the vinyl and it still sounds better.
CDs have been around a good long time – the 33 1/3 rpm LP was developed in 1948, so it was only around for about 34 years when the CD came along. I do not see the attraction in buying vinyl albums with built-in hiss, even if they sound arguably “warmer”.