When did the average person first hear about CDs?

[Aeschines]

Great comments, everyone! It’s funny how there is a lot of micro-history that doesn’t necessarily make it into the history books.

A few more things from me…

I find it hard to imagine that an adult with any interest in music would not have heard of CDs by, say, the end of 1984, as record stores were giving them small but prominent space by then IIRC. Certainly by sometime in 1985 they were quite visible in your basic music chains like Camelot. Plus, they were new tech and getting considerable press.

My best friend (then and now) and I sneered CDs. We were vinyl guys, but, moreover, CDs were pricey. A new vinyl record cost $10-12 in 84/85, but CDs started out at $19.95 IIRC. One thing that pissed us off was that the quality of vinyl pressings by the majors was deteriorating quite noticeably. I got the Shriekback album Oil & Gold when it came out in 1985, and it was just lousy with skips. I returned it to the store, and the next one was just as bad. I think I returned that one too and just gave up.

It started to get hard to get new releases on vinyl around 1990 or so. I remember feeling thrilled to find Poison by Bel Biv Devoe in 1991 on vinyl.

I bit the CD bullet in 1992 when I went to Japan. Vinyl died much sooner there than in the US. CDs were it by the mid to late 80s. CDs were still pricey in Japan, but a vast industry had sprung up of stores renting CDs so that you could copy the songs you wanted on cassette. I bought Beatles CDs and a lot of blues discs that I still have today.

In terms of their use in data, yeah, it’s easy to forget how recently that became common. When I went to grad school in 1998, we were all using 3.25" floppies in the computer lab. There was no CD capability and, needless to say, no shared server space to use.

Then, suddenly, it seemed as if CD drives were everywhere, and my first MacBook in 2004 had one built in.

[journeyman_southpaw]

@DrCube

Does anybody remember when they stopped selling CDs in those long, rectangular, LP-length packages? All I can think is early-90s had the long packages and by my high school years in the later 90s they were just cellophane wrapped CD-sized squares. 93-94-ish? Or was it earlier than that even?

They were called longboxes and they were phased out in 1993 after years of complaints that they were environmentally wasteful.

[pulykamell]

@Aeschines

Then, suddenly, it seemed as if CD drives were everywhere, and my first MacBook in 2004 had one built in.

And just as quickly, they seemed to be disappearing, starting with the MacBook Air in 2008 (although I don’t think that is actually the first to leave off the optical drive, but the most visible one.) It’s been several years since I even touched a data DVD or CD (or, actually, any CD or DVD.) My current desktop doesn’t have one (though I do have a CD/DVD burner in the closet just in case.)

[Aeschines]

@pulykamell

And just as quickly, they seemed to be disappearing, starting with the MacBook Air in 2008 (although I don’t think that is actually the first to leave off the optical drive, but the most visible one.) It’s been several years since I even touched a data DVD or CD (or, actually, any CD or DVD.) My current desktop doesn’t have one (though I do have a CD/DVD burner in the closet just in case.)

Exactly, it wasn’t tech that lasted all that long once Wi-Fi allowed people to download a lot of data without a physical medium.

I first heard of Wi-Fi in 2004 when I got that MacBook. My colleague insisted I get a Mac with Wi-Fi capability… I was going into business for myself (the colleague became my client), and it was the first time I ever got my own computer for myself, specifically. I think I first had Wi-Fi in my house in 2005 and started seeing it in coffee shops and whatnot around 2006.

[cochrane]

@journeyman_southpaw

They were called longboxes and they were phased out in 1993 after years of complaints that they were environmentally wasteful.

I remember buying cassettes the 70s that also came packaged in longboxes, so they preceded the CD ones.

[oliversarmy]

I don’t remember when I first heard of CDs, but I do remember buying my first CD player probably sometime in 1984 or '85 at an electronics store from a friend who was a salesman there. I still have it and use it when I listen to CDs. The brand name on it is Scott, but I have no idea who the actual manufacturer was. It’s way older than my adult children and usually more entertaining.

[puzzlegal]

@pulykamell

OK, well, let’s try to do this pseudo-scientifically:

Here’s the Google ngram results for instances of “compact disk” and “compact disc” from 1980-1995 in the English language corpus.

It looks like between 1983 and 1984 is where the biggest jump in the instances of that term being used in print occurred. If we take the levels of 1989 and beyond as representing a time where pretty much everyone was aware of the word (the word’s popularity in print peaked then in this time period and remained relatively stable), then I’d guess by 1986 most people would have been aware of it.

That sounds about right. I graduated college in 1984, and I bought my first cd when I was in college. But mostly I didn’t buy them because they were a lot more expense than (vinyl) records. They got popular shortly thereafter.

[aceplace57]

CD’s seemed to pop up on store shelves in the mid 80’s. I’d never heard of them before then.

My strongest memory is the speciality record shops putting a lot of albums in cut out bins. I bought all 5 CCR albums from a cut out bins.

They were clearing shelf space for CD’s.

I happily bought as much discounted vinyl as I could afford. At the time I was fully committed to using vinyl exclusively. I didn’t buy a CD player until 93? or 94.

I still have my vinyl collection. I have converted several to digital.

CD’s occasionally change the track order or even drop a song to fit the time limitations. I prefer converting the vinyl album and keeping my track order intact.

[cochrane]

I remember when Best Buy started selling CDs for $12.99 or $13.99 when they were $17.99 in most other places. Phar More (a now defunct pharmacy chain) also sold CDs for around $5 less than other places. That’s when I started building up a collection.

[Darren_Garrison]

@Aeschines

My best friend (then and now) and I sneered CDs.

Wow, that must have been a sight to see. Was it anything like those tribal guys with the plates in their lips?

[John_Mace]

I was a little bit of a late adopter, and I got my first CD player right after the big earthquake of Oct 1989 destroyed my turntable.

[bump]

@Aeschines

Exactly, it wasn’t tech that lasted all that long once Wi-Fi allowed people to download a lot of data without a physical medium.

I first heard of Wi-Fi in 2004 when I got that MacBook. My colleague insisted I get a Mac with Wi-Fi capability… I was going into business for myself (the colleague became my client), and it was the first time I ever got my own computer for myself, specifically. I think I first had Wi-Fi in my house in 2005 and started seeing it in coffee shops and whatnot around 2006.

Wi fi didn’t have much to do with the abandonment of CDs; rather the widespread availability of relatively high speed internet and the right copyright/distribution/playback models. In other words, it took high enough speed for people to download MP3/AAC/etc… files in a reasonable time, and it took essentially the iPod and iTunes to really push the whole digital music revolution.

What we’re seeing now is a switch in delivery from being a file that’s stored and transferred and then played, to the file content being streamed in real-time. And again, wi-fi’s not driving that either; if any sort of networking standard is driving that, it’s the high speed wireless stuff like 4G LTE, not a LAN standard.

[BubbaDog]

I bought the first commercially produced CD player in 1984. Sony_CDP-101

Sony had a special where you could pick it up for the low price of $900…but it also came with your choice of 10 available CDs of your choice.

I remember one CD was Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. I choose that because it had a label on the front that stated “CAUTION: DIGITAL CANNONS”.

I also picked up Ry Cooder’s Bop till You Drop which was the first digitally recorded commercial CD.

I was a full on digital music nerd back in those days.

[jtur88]

I was probably “the average person” about things like that. I first became fully aware of CD’s (that were not high yield investments) in about 1988, when I bought my GF a CD player, which was still numbingly expensive. And a couple dozen CD’s of classical music by Soviet Bloc orchestras, in the $1.98 rack. Eastern countries offered their performances free of royalties, since the musicians were all state employees and the compositions were in public domain.

[bonzer]

Being in the UK, I surely saw Kieran Prendiville’s Tomorrow’s World demo of them in 1981. They were then common enough when I was at university in the second half of the decade, though I was a late adopter and didn’t buy a player until 1993.

@erysichthon

I also remember that, early on, people somehow got the idea that CDs were indestructible (this was before most people had actually seen or handled one). I remember a coworker talking about how you could throw a CD on the floor and stomp on it without affecting its playability (he hadn’t seen one either; this was just something he “heard”). There was some disappointment when we learned that although they weren’t as fragile as LPs, CDs could indeed be damaged by mishandling.

That’s - infamously - sort of part of the clip above, though he just scratches one. It does seem to have been part of the early PR and was widely believed at the time.

[Toxylon]

I was a music buff elementary school kid in the 80’s, and it was all cassettes for me and my friends (and LPs for our parents), up until '89 or so, when some of my friends from well-to-do families started getting CDs. Still, it was a couple of years before I had my first CD player and started my CD collection.

[JKellyMap]

The CD I happened to be enjoying in a rented car in Mexico today – I pulled it out of a basement box (US home) almost at random as I was packing for my trip – was made in 1982. It’s of Jimi Hendrix live performances, and the label proudly mentions that two LPs fit on the one disc. It plays just fine, and sounds great.

I didn’t buy it in '82, though – it must have been 1989 or '90.

[JKellyMap]

Scratch that! (So to speak). I looked it up – the LPs were from 1982, but the CDs were produced in 1989. Odd how that’s not mentioned anywhere in the booklet.

[GuanoLad]

Quite late for me, I think. Maybe 1988 or 89? I know I didn’t see a real one until around 1991.

[Martini_Enfield]

@GuanoLad

Quite late for me, I think. Maybe 1988 or 89? I know I didn’t see a real one until around 1991.

Given our experiences here match up, I wonder if they didn’t get to our part of the world until then?