FEATURE:
Halfway Down 52nd Street
PHOTO CREDIT: Brett Jordan/Unsplash
Approaching Forty Years of the CD: Its Rise and Decline
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IT is amazing that…
we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the compact disc later in the year. Although the technology was invented in 1981, the first album to be released onto CD for the mass market was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. This is a format that would grow in popularity. Right through the 1980s and 1990s, the compact disc was being bought in its droves. With the introduction of the CD player and the portability of music – even if the Sony Discman was flawed -, there was this move towards the more compact and accessible CDs and cassettes rather than vinyl. I think a lot of my very earliest listening was via cassettes. I feel I got my first albums on CD around about the early-1990s. Even so, I think I preferred them to cassettes. CDs, even though they could be scratched, seemed more robust and solid than a cassette. Many was the time I would have to pull a cassette out of a tape machine or boombox, as the spooling has become caught. Also, in terms of skipping tracks or moving back and forth through an album, a CD is much easier in that sense. I do love storing cassettes and having them in a rack through, with its slimmer casing and shape, there are few things more satisfying then a big CD rack full of albums! In a way, even vinyl does not provide that kind of thrill.
PHOTO CREDIT: Denissa Devy/Unsplash
It is a shame that the CD is declining as a format but, leading up to forty years of the introduction of CDs to the wider market, I wanted to chart the history of the humble-yet-reliable technology. Even if the past few years have seen compact disc sales decline, a new report showed that they have risen as of late. This illuminating article provides more information regarding the history and launch of the compact disc:
" In 1976 Phillips and Sony developed the compact disc (CD), an optical disc used to store and playback digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively. CDs can hold up to 700 megabytes. This equates to up to 80 minutes of uncompressed audio. By 2007 200 billion CDs were sold worldwide.
Philips publicly demonstrated a prototype of an optical digital audio disc at a press conference called "Philips Introduce Compact Disc" in Eindhoven, The Netherlands on March 8, 1979. Three years earlier, Sony first publicly demonstrated an optical digital audio disc in September 1976. In September 1978, they demonstrated an optical digital audio disc with a 150 minute playing time, and with specifications of 44,056 Hz sampling rate, 16-bit linear resolution, cross-interleaved error correction code, that were similar to those of the Compact Disc introduced in 1982. Technical details of Sony's digital audio disc were presented during the 62nd AES Convention, held on March 13-16, 1979 in Brussels.
PHOTO CREDIT: Brett Jordan/Unsplash
"The first test CD was pressed in Hannover, Germany by the Polydor Pressing Operations plant in 1981. The disc contained a recording of Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie, played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Herbert von Karajan. The first public demonstration was on the BBC TV show Tomorrow's World when The Bee Gees' 1981 album Living Eyes was played. In August 1982 the real pressing was ready to begin in the new factory, not far from the place where Emil Berliner had produced his first gramophone record 93 years earlier. By now, Deutsche Grammophon, Berliner's company and the publisher of the Strauss recording, had become a part of PolyGram. The first CD to be manufactured at the new factory was The Visitors by ABBA. The first album to be released on CD was Billy Joel's 52nd Street, that reached the market alongside Sony's CD player CDP-101 on October 1, 1982 in Japan. Early the following year on March 2, 1983 CD players and discs (16 titles from CBS Records) were released in the United States and other markets. This event is often seen as the "Big Bang" of the digital audio revolution. The new audio disc was enthusiastically received, especially in the early-adopting classical music and audiophile communities and its handling quality received particular praise. As the price of players sank rapidly, the CD began to gain popularity in the larger popular and rock music markets. The first artist to sell a million copies on CD was Dire Straits, with its 1985 album Brothers in Arms. The first major artist to have his entire catalogue converted to CD was David Bowie, whose 15 studio albums were made available by RCA Records in February 1985, along with four Greatest Hits albums. In 1988, 400 million CDs were manufactured by 50 pressing plants around the world. To date, the biggest selling CD (as opposed to the biggest selling title) is Beatles "1", released in November 2000, with worldwide sales of 30 million discs" (Wikipedia article on Compact Disc, assessed 01-17-2010)”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Haupt/Unsplash
There was good news late last year, where we learned that vinyl sales continue to soar. Cassettes, too, are doing quite well. The Guardian were among those who reported the development:
“For many people, placing a record on the turntable will always be the quintessential musical experience.
Sliding a shiny black disc out of a gatefold sleeve and dust jacket, laying it on the turntable platter, then the unmistakable crackle and the low, almost imperceptible analogue rumble as the needle slides into the groove.
Before the digital revolution, vinyl was the premier choice for listening to music. But the format’s resurgence in popularity over the past few years shows no signs of letting up, with new figures predicted to show sales growing to their highest level in more than three decades.
According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), more than 5m vinyl albums have been bought in the UK over the past 12 months, up 8% on sales in 2020 and the 14th consecutive year of growth since 2007.
By the end of the year, vinyl will have accounted for almost one in four album purchases – the highest proportion since 1990 – according to BPI estimates.
But why? There are tactile, sensuous and theatrical qualities to vinyl that made it a unique format, said Andy Kerr, the director of product marketing and communications for Bowers & Wilkins, a British audiophile speaker maker”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Zyanya BMO/Unsplash
The CD, for me and so many others, was this social thing. I would often take the bus into town to buy a single or album. CDs would be shared, and there was this desirability and pleasure in taking a CD home and playing it on a Discman or a stereo. I still have a CD player in my car. I think that, as many people do not play CDs in cars and hi-fis are less common, maybe we will see CD numbers fall keep stable and rise this year. Cassettes are still being bought, through I think that is more of a retro thing. I wonder whether many people actually can play a cassette. Some say that vinyl is more of a collector thing. I believe that most people buying vinyl are playing that album, rather than it being a piece of art. There will be mixed emotions ahead of the fortieth anniversary of the CD. Many of us will cast our minds back to childhood and the albums that we owned on CD. It was the way that many of us gained a wider knowledge of music. Radio was useful, though it was these albums and singles that were much more important and communal. In 2022, is the CD more of a sign of the past? Is it a relic or something seen as old-fashioned?
I firmly believe that the CD will never die altogether, but there is no good reason why it should be allowed to wither. Devices that play CDs are available still and, compared to vinyl, albums are cheaper on this format. Environmentally, plastic cases are not idea. Another material could be formulated (or you could have CDs in a carboard sleeve). One of the most worrying things is whether there will be this hand-down culture in years to come. From vinyl and CDs through to cassettes, I inherited and heard many interesting albums this way. My parents and friends would give me these CDs that I own to this day. I can look through my collection now and there are memories attached to each CD! I will continue to play these CDs and get enjoyment from them for many years. I love vinyl, though I feel one needs to dedicate their time to the whole album. With a CD, I can select a few tracks or listen in stages. How many people would have thought, in 1982, that the CD would be something we are discussing nearly forty years later?! Never changing its shape and design, it has managed to enjoy this regency and golden period. Whilst streaming has its advantages, there will be no legacy. People aren’t handing down Spotify playlists. Sure, vinyl will still be shared, yet CDs were for me, and so many others, the gateway to music’s past. This interesting article raises a good point regarding the decline of physical music like CDs:
“If you buy an album in digital form today, do you expect to still own it in twenty years? If so, you are banking on some pretty unlikely events. You need to hope that in twenty years there is still some program or service that plays whatever format your music is stored in.
You’re going to have to hope whatever technology you are storing it on remains viable, intact, and free of viruses, and that you remember to back everything up correctly and transfer it over each time you change computers or devices.
If you are storing your music online or in the cloud, you need to depend on those services being around in twenty years, and you need to hope they don’t have some kind of problem or disappear overnight. You are going to have to hope that, if something bad does happen, there is still some version of your music out there for you to replace your lost copy.
To be clear, digital music technology is a good thing. It’s good for new bands, it’s good for established bands and it’s good for the consumer. It makes things easier for everybody, and if you are an unsigned band there has never been a time in history when it is more possible to get your music out to more people.
But it lacks a sturdy vessel, and that’s a big problem. We can’t rely on hard drives and the ubiquitous “cloud storage” to protect our music and culture for years or decades to come. Unless this changes, in twenty years there will be a lot of music you remember from years past that you simply will not have access to anymore. It may exist somewhere, in the digital vault of some record company, but as far as the public is concerned it is gone”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Nicholas Nguyen/Unsplash
In spite of lower-than-hoped sales of CDs over the past few years and the boom of vinyl, there is no doubting the fact CDs have a huge role in the history of physical music. Whilst there will be features published in October, I wanted to write something today to coincide with news about the continuing growth of vinyl. It is great that physical music is still in good health, though I hope that more people buy CDs and build their collection. When it comes to passing on music and handing it down to the next generation, we need physical formats to flourish and sustain. Without that, you do fear that a lot of people will miss out on so much. Having inspired and thrilled generations for forty years, I wanted to salute the CD. They have created countless memories for people all around the world. It would be nice to think that, on its fifty anniversary a decade from now, CDs are still being bought (even if new albums by huge artists account for the visibility of CDs). Maybe less relevant than they were in the 1980s and 1990s, letting the format become extinct would be a massive mistake! Even though a lot of my older CDs are not being played often, I have no desire to get rid of the collection. As I said, each album holds a memory and is part of a larger tapestry. To me, they are…
PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Haupt/Unsplash
SO precious to own.