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Compact discs gave us our first taste of digital music.
When it arrived in the United States in March 1983, the sleek 4.7-inch plastic-and-aluminum disc (about the size of a drink coaster) was crisp and clean, without the pops you hear on vinyl LPs or the hiss of tape. Promised digital music playback.
The CD had some drawbacks. The vinyl coffee table sized artwork and text was lost due to the size of the new format.
And in the beginning, CDs were sold in long cardboard boxes that weren’t very environmentally friendly to prevent theft. The plastic case also had a nasty little metal tape seal called a dog bone.
But with a CD, you can listen to over an hour of music just by pressing play. You can also skip tracks and shuffle. CDs took recorded music revenues to new heights in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and remained the primary consumer choice until other digital formats replaced the CD in 2012. I was.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, US music lovers have purchased 14.9 billion CDs since the format’s introduction.
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Musicians still love compact discs
Country star Thomas Rhett’s latest album, 2022 release Where We Started, is available on vinyl, CD, cassette and, of course, digital download or streaming.
“Everyone is streaming music,” Rhett told USA TODAY. But in the last few years there has been a move to make music available in more physical formats, he said.
“There’s something about having ownership of music for me,” Rhett said.
“I feel like they’re back.”
For international touring band Radkey, selling CDs and records at the band’s live gigs in Kansas City helps keep the show going. Bassist Isaiah Radke said, “We can use the proceeds from the merchandise sales to pay for things like gas and hotels.
“CDs are still doing pretty well,” he said. “I feel like they’re coming back in a way.”
We will be back for sure. According to the RIAA, physical music sales (mostly vinyl records, but also CDs and cassettes) will grow by 4% in 2022.
Leading the way was Taylor Swift, whose “Midnights” album sold the most physical copies: 945,000 on vinyl, 640,000 on CD, and 14,000 on cassette. Swift has also sold his 174,000 “Folklore” vinyl LP in 2022.
Adding on-demand audio and video streams, Bad Bunny’s ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’ was the top album of the year. Swift’s “Midnights” sold her 3.3 million copies, compared to 3.4 million album sales, according to Luminate.
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Digital music sales are growing
According to the RIAA, streaming services will push music spending to a record $15.9 billion in 2022, accounting for 84% of all spending. Music streamed through subscription services, ad-supported services, digital radio, social media, digital fitness apps and other options totaled $13.3 billion.
Paid subscriptions for services like Spotify will grow 8% in 2022, surpassing $10 billion for the first time.
Vinyl records surpassed CDs for the first time in decades
For the first time since 1987, consumers bought more vinyl LPs than CDs, according to the RIAA. Consumers will buy 41.3 million record LPs and 200,000 record singles in 2022, up 3.2%. CD sales fell by 28%, with albums he sold to 33.4 million and single CDs to 100,000.
According to the RIAA, higher-than-usual vinyl spending will surpass CD revenue at $643.9 million for vinyl and $483.2 million for CDs in 2020.
Sales of vinyl albums have been slowly increasing since 2005 grossed only $14.2 million. The record is that in 2022 he increased by 20% to $1.2 billion.
CD sales, which grew 21% to $585.4 million in 2021, will decline slightly to $482.6 million in 2022.
When was the compact disc invented?
Sony and Philips, which brought LaserDisc to market in 1978, began developing compact discs in 1979. The first players and discs were released in Japan in 1982, followed by Europe and America in March 1983. When was his first CD released in Japan?Billy Joel’s “52nd Street”.
When it first came out in the US in 1983, only 75 stores in the country sold the CD, and the player was expensive at around $900, reported The Atlantic. This equates to approximately $2,700 in today’s dollars. Discs originally cost $16-20, but now equate to $48-60 with inflation.
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How do compact discs work?
Digital data show long, microscopic bumps (pits when viewed from above) measuring 125 nanometers in height or depth (which, by a curious coincidence, equals the microscopic size of the COVID-19 viral particle). Stored in a spiral column. Scientists at Yale University say that a straight string of data that makes up an album on a music CD is about 3.5 miles long.
When a CD is placed in the player, an infrared laser reads through the clear polycarbonate plastic substrate that makes up most of the disc’s thickness and reflects off the embedded aluminum layer. When the laser hits a bump, a sensor records changes in the intensity of the reflected beam and converts it into musical digital data.
What made compact discs so successful? Cool looks and portability
Several factors contributed to the CD’s success. Record labels and electronics manufacturers can charge more than vinyl LPs and turntables.
CDs may have cost more, but consumers realized the value. Sound & Vision columnist and author of Principles of Digital Audio, Ken Pohlmann, says:
“The discs were about as cheap to produce as LP records, and they were more durable than LP records.
“And the real breakthrough was that CDs made music portable … at home, in the car, on the plane, on the jog. There was one format to rule them all. It was a shock to consumers at the time.”
Compact discs led to subsequent formats such as DVD and Blu-ray Disc, each of which stored movies, video games, and music on ever-larger discs.
How are compact discs selling?
Eight years after the introduction of the CD, it has overtaken the cassette as the dominant format. According to the RIAA, his CD sales in 1991 totaled his $4.3 billion, accounting for 55.4% of his total recorded music earnings that year.
In 1999, consumers spent $13 billion on CDs. This represents his 88% of his $14.6 billion spent on music. In today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation, his consumer spending on CDs that year would be nearly $23 billion, a large portion of his $25.6 billion spent on music that year. . Say.
CD sales have been declining since 2000. The slight increase in his CD sales in 2021 may be due to shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted people to stay home and buy more discs, he said. said Pohlmann. “The pandemic distorted everything,” he said. “I wonder if that’s another distortion.”
Will compact discs survive?
When the format was designed in the 1980s, optical discs were the obvious storage medium because they could store millions of bytes of data (or minutes of music) at a low cost.
“As solid-state memory became affordable, MP3 players and iPods exploded,” says Pohlmann. “This was his CD’s death knell because it had all the advantages of a compact disc, but was smaller and more convenient.”
This can shorten the life of shiny silver discs. But he said one of the beloved music formats might survive.
“I think LPs will last longer than CDs. It’s hard to say, but LPs are a more retro technology. They’re more authentic, they’re more romantic,” Pohlmann said. “The CD is one of the most beautifully designed products to come out in the late 20th century. He opened the door to the modern world of digital music, but I think it was an age-old transitional technology.”
Follow Mike Snyder on Twitter. @Mike Snyder.
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