By Joe Fedewa, How to Geek | CDs were the most popular method for listening to music for over 20 years. Unsurprisingly, something new eventually came to take over…but then something old did, too.
It’s completely normal for a new technology to rise to prominence and then get replaced by the next new technology. Music is one industry where this has played out over and over again. However, the CD is particularly interesting because it totally obliterated the old guard and then fell behind it again later on. That almost never happens in the world of technology.
The Meteoric Rise of CDs
When CDs were first made commercially available in the 1980s, vinyl records were already on their decline. Vinyl had essentially been the go-to method for listening to music since the early 1900s, but cassette tapes took over and stayed on top until 1990.
That’s when CDs became the most popular form of listening to music, and their popularity can’t be understated. At their peak in December 2002, CDs accounted for a staggering 95% of all music sold in the U.S. Ninety-five. For comparison, the previous front-runner, cassettes, only peaked at 55%. CDs had become more popular than practically any music standard before it.
But why did CDs have such massive success? Well, a number of reasons.
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Read more of this fascinating article here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/why-cds-didn-t-stand-the-test-of-time/
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The Rise and Fall of CDs (And Why They’re Coming Back)
By Joe Fedewa, How-to-Geek | There have been many formats introduced for playing music over the years, but none have dominated more than CDs. After peaking in 2002, it’s been a slow decline ever since. However, their turn as the golden child of physical media may not be over.
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Read more about Vinyl vs. CDs here:
https://www.howtogeek.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-cds-and-why-theyre-coming-back/
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Why Were CDs Seen As More Viable For Used Sales Than Vinyl Was?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/used-cds-how-a-controversial-product-disrupted-the-music-industry/
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All of this is to say that, to the average person who didn’t invest in a quality playback system, it was easy to see judge the vinyl record itself as having poor sound quality. A December 1991 Billboard article noted, “Since CDs, unlike vinyl records, are not easily damaged, consumers can buy a used disc with the confidence that it is as good as new.” Given these factors, and the fact that CDs were hyped with the slogan “perfect sound forever,” it’s easy to see how the compact disc became the music format that retailers and consumers alike saw as preferable for a secondhand market.