Interesting how many people chose Pink Floyd for their first CD (so did we). We transitioned in '88 or '89. We went through our album collection and replaced most of it in chunks of 4 or 5 at a time.
Then some little fuckers stole 'em all.
Luckily, we had just taken photos of them and were able to replace them all. I went through the picture with a magnifying glass, we wrote down every title, went to Rose Records and asked them how much to replace them. Got a total, went to the insurance company, got a check, and we were done.
First CD was The Police ‘Synchronicity’, and my first player was a Nikko. I still bought vinyl over the years (e.g., I bought examples of all of the Pogues LPs, EPs and singles available in addition to CDs, or else I bought vinyl when the song/band was not available on CD). I did not buy vinyl after the early-'90s, except for a pair of Suburban Lawns 7" that I managed to get my hands on several months ago, and Oscar Brand’s ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ I got last month – even though I no longer have a proper stereo (takes up too much space) and my turntable is packed away.
I made the transition around '88 or '89 because most retailers had ceased to sell vinyl. Still have all of my LPs, and a nice Dual belt-drive TT for playing them. Not positive which was the first CD purchased-either Paula Abdul’s Forever Your Girl or Van Halen’s OU812.
By the time I was buying music for myself (early 80’s), I was in my Cassette phase. When I bought vinyl, it was either because it was really cheap or it was something I couldn’t find on tape, and I used my parents’ stereo to make myself a cassette copy so I could listen to it on my own equipment.
I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get a CD player, since CD’s were significantly more expensive than cassettes, and I was reasonably happy with cassettes as long as I didn’t know what I was missing. (A similar comment could be made about my transition from VHS to DVDs.) My first CD player was a Christmas present in 1991. From that point onward, I still bought plenty of tapes from the bargain bins, but anything I really wanted enough to pay full price for, I bought on CD.
Got a really nice CD player for my birthday. Only bought about 20-25 CDs, all of which were in a case in my car when it was stolen in 1999. Got married the next year, and haven’t purchased too many CDs since then (my wife has an extensive colleciton, and our tastes overlap). I still have about 300-400 of my LPs, though I need to get a new turntable.
I think it must have been the late 80’s at the earliest. I remember lending a friend my LP copy of The Wall just before graduation from high school in 1985. He never returned it, but a year or so later he turned up out of the blue at my door one evening. He had come to return my album, but it had gotten scratched or broken or something. He bought me a CD replacement, and also bought me a cassette in case I didn’t have a CD player. I didn’t, and it was quite some time before I got one.
So you can count me as another of those whose first CD was a Pink Floyd album
I recall going shopping with a friend in college who had just gotten a CD player and wanted to know the answer to the same question. I remember that many of the CDs had warning labels on them: “WARNING - DIGITAL CANNONS”. And it was very important to get a CD that was coded DDD and not AAD, to make sure that the entire recording process was done digitally.
By the time I started buying music the Walkman craze had already hit, so it was cassettes for everything.
I decided to switch in 1991, when I went to the music shop and realized that cassettes had now been relegated to just one shelf out of the entire store.
I bought my first CD in 1986. I bought my last vinyl album in early 1989.
Why did I make the move?
Well we didn’t own a CD player until 1986.
And after that, as others have said, for some time it wasn’t possible to buy everything on CD. Notably many less popular artists would put off CD release until they had sufficient LP sales, so CD releases were commonly several months later than LP releases, and often didn’t occur at all.
I finally stopped buying vinyl when I no longer needed to buy vinyl, ie when everything was availble on CD at the time of initial release. I suspect this is going to be a common answer.
It was some time in 1986/87. Not long after I moved out of my parents’ house. Since I was buying stuff of my own, it didn’t seem sensible to buy a turntable, so I went with a CD player instead.
I requested one for Christmas in 1981. I was 20 years old. My sister, who went shopping for it with my mother, later told me that my mother said “Your sister really wants one of these, but I don’t know why. It’ll never last. It’s just a fad”. Heh.
1987/1988 or so. I bought my first CD, Weather Report’s Heavy Weather, so I could do “test listens” when shopping for my CD player.
The thing that really pushed me into CDs was that Frank Zappa managed to get virtually his entire back catalog released on RykoDisc CDs. There were a number of releases of his which were almost impossible to find back then on vinyl.
Well, I really went from 8 track (Jr. Highish) to cassette (HS on up to young married around the middle 80s) to CD (late 80s to early 90s?) to mp3 player (around 99?). These are guessed at periods of time, the memory is the first thing to go.
I moved from the UK to the US (for the first time) and bought my first CD player. I shipped my record deck over but although I could handle the 110/240 volt difference, the 50/60Hz difference was a killer - unless you like all your favorite artists to have unnaturally high voices. I never bought an LP after that.
'89ish. I had such an extensive vinyl/cassette collection that I wasn’t looking forward to the expense of upgrading. Then one night, I met a rather drunken girl in a bar who told me that she was the manager at a local record store, but that she was going to quit the next day. She told me to stop by and I could help myself.
I helped and helped and helped some more. Made it worthwhile to finally get a CD player.
1985, on my 40th birthday. I had quit buying vinyl a year earlier, in anticipation of switching. As soon as I heard the difference between an LP and a CD, I was hooked.
I think I bought my first CD in 1990 or 1991. I can remember that it was Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles.
I owned that record on 8-track, lp, cassette and CD.
I do not want to live through another format change!
Still have a record player, still play records. I still think of buying someone’s new “record”, not CD, for the most part, though it’s starting to be replaced by “album”.
And I still miss the big record jackets, the artwork, the room for art/fun they had, and studying the sleeve and liner notes and such while the music played. I miss gatefold lp covers.
