Compact Discs

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With the 1983 mass market introduction of CDs (compact discs), the face of the music recording and retail industry changed dramatically. As the price of compact disc players tumbled from $1,500 to $500 and below, CDs were quickly adopted by music consumers and pushed the long-playing vinyl record virtually off the market.

CDs offered extremely high sound quality, free from the scratches or needle dust "noise" found on vinyl records. Compact discs were the first introduction of digital technology to the general public. Records and tapes had been recorded using analog technology. Digital recording samples sounds and represents them as a series of numbers encoded in binary form and stored on the disc's data surface. The CD player's laser light reads this data and when it is converted back into an electric signal, it is then amplified and played through headphones or loudspeakers. On a CD nothing except light touches the disc with no wear to the recording. In addition to the superior sound of CDs, the new technology also allowed any song, or any part of a song, to be accessed quickly. Most CD players could be programmed to play specific songs, omit songs, or reorder them, providing a "customization" previously unavailable with cassette tapes or records.

While the portability of cassette tapes—with hand-held cassette players like the Sony Walkman and the ubiquity of cassette players in automobiles—slowed the domination of CDs in the market, manufacturers quickly produced products to offer the superior sound quality, flexibility, and longevity of CDs in automobiles and for personal use. By the end of the century, CD players that could hold several CDs at a time were installed in automobiles and people could carry personal CD players to listen to their favorite music with headphones while exercising. Although manufacturers and record companies had for the most part stopped manufacturing both cassette players and prerecorded tapes, cassette tapes continued to be used in home recording and in automobiles. By the late 1990s, cassettes were no longer a viable format for prerecorded popular music in the United States although they remained the most used format for sound recording worldwide.

The physical size of CDs altered the nature of liner notes and album covers. The large size of LP covers had long offered a setting for contemporary graphic design and artwork, but the smaller size of the CD package, or "jewel box," made CD "cover art" an oxymoron. Liner notes and song lyrics became minuscule as producers tried to fit their material into 5-by-5 inch booklets. The "boxed set," a collection of two or more CDs in a longer cardboard box, became popular as retrospectives for musicians and groups, collecting all of a musician or groups' output including rare and unreleased material with a booklet of extensive notes and photographs. Ironically, the average playing time of a CD was more than 70 minutes but most albums continued to hold about 40 minutes of music, the amount available on LPs.

Though the long-playing records were technologically obsolete and no longer stocked on the shelves of major music retailers, they were still found in stores specializing in older recordings and used by rap and hip-hop performers who scratched and mixed records to make their music. LPs also experienced a minor resurgence in 1998 from sales to young people interested in the "original" sound of vinyl. Nevertheless, the CD had become the dominant medium for new music by the end of the century.

Millard, Andre. America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound. Cambridge University Press, 1995.