The Compact Disc

The more observant reader will be calling 'shenanigans' here, since it is well known that the Compact Disc digital audio made its debut in the autumn of 1982, with the first released CD being Billy Joel's '52nd Street' album.

That said, Compact Discs were only launched properly in early 1983 when a selection of titles became available internationally, including in the UK. Initially, the format was marketed as ideal for listeners of classical music, and it was not until later that more mainstream titles were made available on CD. The other obstacle to more people adopting the format early was price; the early CD players, sold as a separate component to slot into an existing hi-fi separates system, cost several hundred pounds to buy, and the discs themselves typically retailed at £10, while a conventional vinyl LP sold for £5 or £6 on average.

Consequently, take up was slow although the publicity and marketing campaigns stressed the advantages of the format (greater capacity being one) and the taglines claimed that the CD provided 'perfect sound which lasts forever'. Of course, we now know that neither claim is true, but it was easy to be taken in by those shiny silver discs and the modern machines which read them using a laser, all of which looked so futuristic 30 years ago.

The specification for Compact Disc Digital Audio was published by Philips and Sony, in a document known as The Red Book. Anyone so technically-orientated to want to know what that entails can look it up on Wikipedia but essentially, to qualify for the use of the distinctive Compact Disc Digital Audio logo, the players and the discs themselves needed to conform to that Red Book standard. Later on, differing standards were applied as the Compact Disc became used for other applications, such as data storage and also to allow for video data; CDs made for this purpose were not necessarily Red Book standard.

Many years later, when recordable CDs became available, record labels were increasingly concerned about the ability to copy a standard audio CD and began including copy protection technology on their discs. This became controversial when Philips declared that to retrofit such technology violated the Red Book standard, and so the immediately recognisable Compact Disc Digital Audio logo began to disappear from discs and also from the jewel cases, which had always bore the logo since the inception of the format. Some of these new discs containing the anti-copying technology could not be read by some players, thereby not conforming to the agreed standard.

Nowadays, CD is on the wane, having had a long run as the dominant music format its position has been overtaken by MP3 audio and other sound files meant to be downloaded to a computer, and played on a portable device such as Apple's iPod. This has meant an outcry from traditionalists who prefer a physical format, but this is only a repeat of the outcry in the 1980s, when the miniature sized CD replaced the vinyl LP, with protests that album artwork would lose all of its impact when reduced in size. That may have been true, but the vinyl LP still exists and it is likely that because of the number of CD players still out there today, the Compact Disc will continue for some time to come.

Below is a news report from BBC 'Breakfast Time' in 1983:
****2023 Update - replaced old dead link ****