30 Years of CDs

Looks like the venerable Compact Disc turned 30 years old on Sunday.

Compact discs weren’t always impromptu drink coasters. Once, in the not-so-distant past, they played music, contained pictures, and let people play video games with tacked-on FMV sequences. And today, the venerable CD turned 30.

Of course, the CD didn’t immediately take off right then and there…it wouldn’t be until October 1, 1982 that Billy Joel’s 52nd Street became the first CD album released. It was conveniently released in Japan alongside Sony’s brand new CDP-101 Compact Disc player. The album (and more importantly the medium it was pressed upon) changed history, as more compact disc players were introduced into the market beginning in 1983. The music CD would reach its zenith with The Beatles “1” (30 million in sales), before beginning its eventual and inevitable fall to the Mp3 in the mid-2000’s (in 2008, for example, CD sales dropped 20%).

The first CD I ever bought was purchased while on a trip of some sort — I’m not sure, but I think it was during a trip to the Episcopal Youth Event one summer. A group of us Episcopal Youth had flown from Anchorage to Seattle, from whence we’d load up in a van and drive to Missoula, Montana for the EYE. While in Seattle, we got to browse through the Pike Place Market. This was my first time there, and I remember two things clearly: seeing a prop phaser (possibly a replica, though I’ve always remembered it being an original prop) at Golden Age Collectibles for quite a few hundred dollars more than I had available to me; and browsing through one of the music stores in the Market and finding a “Limited Edition” of Queen’s “The Miracle” album.

I didn’t even have a CD player at this point, but this was a limited edition! Who knew how long it would be on the market, or whether we’d ever be able to get it in the frozen wastelands of Alaska! As a Queen fan, I had to have it, and I plunked my money down. Of course, it wasn’t long before I discovered that “Limited Editions” are rarely anything but marketing drivel, but hey, I had my first CD.

(I did this with my DVD collection as well, picking up the original, un-edited release of “The Devil’s Advocate” before that pressing was recalled to have the unauthorized appropriation of the Ex Nihilo sculpture digitally edited out. This time, I’ve got a Special Edition that’s truly special!)

Amusingly, before that point, I wasn’t convinced that CDs were going to take off. In fact, it would be far more accurate to say that I was convinced that they wouldn’t take off. I mean, really, they didn’t seem that that much of an improvement over the tapes I’d been collecting for some time by then. They didn’t seem to sound any different, and you couldn’t even repurpose them when you got tired of the music that was on them! At least with cassettes, you could tape over the little holes at the top and put whatever you wanted on there after you were bored with that album. These CD things would be useless if you decided you didn’t want the music!

Of course, better CD players and better stereos soon convinced me that yes, there was a (very) audible improvement in sound quality, my CD collection soon grew to far outstrip that of my cassette collection, and now the majority of the 1,500-some CDs I own are in storage, while any of that music (and so much more) is available at a moments notice on my computer. And yet, I spend a chunk of my free time importing old LPs, 45s, and 78s to my computer, relishing the warm tones and old, outdated, analog crackles and pops of my collection of vinyl. The more things change, the more they stay the same.