Ongoing History Daily: The birth of the compact disc
Let’s take a look at the birth of the compact disc, which first appeared for sale in February 1983. It was the result of a joint project between Sony of Japan and Philips
Read MoreCompact Discs
Is this a landmark decision? Lorde won’t release her new album on CD.
Thanks the rise of streaming, CD sales have been dropping like an extinction-level asteroid for years. Most new cars don’t even come with CD players anymore. It’s just a matter of time before
Read More
Weekly survey: When was the last time you bought a CD?
While filing some vinyl over the weekend, I realized that I hadn’t had to file any new CDs for a while. How long was it? A month? Three? Longer? “Wait a sec,” I
Read MoreOngoing History of New Music Daily: Mispressed Records
I often get emails from people asking about mispressed CDs and records. Occasionally, there are mixups at the pressing plant where the wrong music is pressed onto the wrong CD or record. This
Read MoreCan you safely and properly recycle CDs? Yes, but…
Look around your place. How many CDs do you have? How many of them still spark joy? How many have been made redundant by ripping them to some digital storage format? And how
Read More
Should we still be buying CDs? Yes.
I think the last time I bought a CD was in the UK about 18 months ago. I’d stumbled on a bootleg recording of The Who’s 1982 “farewell” show at Maple Leaf Gardens
Read More
By the end of the year, vinyl could outsell CDs for the first time since 1986 (in the US, anyway).
The sales of compact discs have been in a death spiral for almost twenty years and no amount of pulling back on the stick will avoid crashing into the ground. Canadian sales are
Read More
It’s possible that vinyl will outsell CDs in the US as early as this year
Even though I wrote the above headline, I still can’t quite believe it. But according to the Recording Industry Association of America’s number-crunching of music sales in 2018, this is how things could
Read More
How long will you continue to buy things like CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays?
Item 1: Earlier this month, Samsung announced it was going to stop investing in new Blu-ray technology. While the company will continue to manufacture players for the foreseeable future, they won’t be spending
Read MoreCD sales continue their death spiral in 2018. It’s not looking good and getting worse.
Rewind to 1999. Vinyl is all but dead. Predictions are that this might be the last year to buy a turntable. The CD had triumphed. No one ever expected vinyl to make any
Read More
CD sales continue to tank this summer
It’s fascinating to watch how quickly sales of physical music are cratering in the age of streaming. Looking at the American SoundScan charts from last week, Drake’s Scorpion is again at #1, selling
Read More