Throughout the past decade or so, the CD has slowly been dying as it has been replaced by digital downloads and streaming. Yet, the success of the CD is of no doubt. The journey to creating the Compact Disc began in the early 1970’s with work done by Sony and Phillips, to create an optical disc with digitally encoded sound that was read by a laser. As many people know, before the CD, our parents and grandparents listened to all their music through vinyl and and cassette tape, and even an 8-track player. Once the CD arose into culture, the problem people had was getting their hands on a CD player. The first album released to the market was Billy Joels 1978 album “52nd Street”, which was fully released on Compact Disc in 1982. It was Billy Joels very popular and already well-known album that made him brave enough to release the first ever CD. Shown below is one of Billy Joels songs off of the album, called “My Life”, which is one of my personal favorite songs by him, given I do not know many. This song was produced by Phil Ramone and originated in New York City. I think it’s really cool that you can see on the bottom right of the album cover it displays the compact disc logo.
Shortly after, Sony created the first ever compact disc player called the CDP-101, that sold for roughly $750, which the size was huge compared to anything today. The size was an issue, as nearly two years later Sony came out with the Discman, a portable CD walker. Personally, growing up my parents used CDs very often. My mom had a Sony Boombox that held 6 discs at one time, playing whichever one she chose. We slowly began to have a rather large collection of CDs, as in the late 90’s they were very easy to access and were considerably cheap in the stores. I got my first portable CD player in second grade, which I thought I was the coolest kid on the bus with my headphones in playing the old “Marshal Mathers Lp” or one of the many “Now Thats What I Call Music” mixtapes. Nearly everytime we walked into the store, my mom would buy me a new CD to listen to. Once I was in fourth grade, my babysitter taught me how to burn CDs and make my own with whatever songs I wanted on there. That was a game changer, in which I think that blossomed the idea of being able to stream music.
When the CD was born, it pushed the vinyl to the side. As the use of vinyls and cassettes became nearly obsolete, yet the CD was held its focus for nearly two decades. During this time, CD-R and CD-RW became very popular, which was a blank disc that allowed users to download any music they would want, like the mixtapes my babysitter made me. As this audio format blossomed, it soon came to an end as history repeats itself. The emergence of the MP3 player in the 2000’s put the CD sales down, and soon nobody was buying them anymore. In fact, a well known Kodak aperture article stated that, “…by 2015, only 24% of music sales in the United States were courtesy of the CD. Three years later, Best Buy, one of the leading CD retail sellers announced plans to significantly decrease focus on the sales of what was once the form of music entertainment.” Even though CDs are still being sold in stores today, it may not be too long until an artist will release the last CD on the market.
Twenty years ago, a new revolution of music came about when Napster was created that changed the way of music forever. Napster had nearly over 20 million users, which was founded as a P2P file sharing software where listeners could share music files into an MP3 format. This later got shut down due to wholesale infringement against copyrights.
Today, I hardly even see people using iPods anymore as everything is on their phones. Just like nearly everyone I know, I pay a monthly subscription to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. They both offer slight differences which is why I have both of them. I can listen to any song that I want at anytime, and make unlimited number of playlists that I please. This is the number one used service for music around the world as Spotify has nearly 248 million users! Spotify is unique because at the end of the year, they do an entire recap of your most streamed music and your top five artists. If anybody is interested, a link to my top 2019 playlist is posted here.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1EtoRgXCNkRw5H?si=0BZOr96CSHm9-pyV_-tWeA
In 2019, Post Malone was listed at the highest streamed artist with 6.5 billion streams, with Billie Eilish right behind him at 6 billion. Yet, the highest streamed song on Spotify in the last year is a duet by Cuban singer Camilla Cabello and Canadian singer Shawn Mendes called, “Señorita”. This hit had nearly 1 billion streams, which was released June 21, 2019 in the US as a Latin Pop song, being produced by Andrew Watt and Benny Blanco.
To this day, I still own my CD collection that ranges from albums by Jack Johnson to multiple mixtapes. Yet they hold a special place in my heart, I never use them anymore because every song I want is at my fingertips. I will probably never get rid of them though. I recall playing CDs in the car when I was young, and I realized that many cars that are being made today do not even have a CD player in them anymore, where at one point (not too long ago) a CD player in a vehicle was luxury. Times are moving so fast and so is the music industry. It makes me wonder where the future will take us with music. Will we continue to stream music for many years, or will we have them in our head at one point? That is a bit extreme but at this rate, you never know.
Waniata, R. (2018, February 9). Remembering the rise (and final fall) of the late, great Compact Disc. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-the-cds-rise-and-fall/
Wallace, D. (2019, August 16). What were the First Albums Released on CD? Retrieved from https://kodakdigitizing.com/blogs/news/what-were-the-first-albums-released-on-cd
Joel, B. (1978). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVX80UpMPDI
Mendes, S., & Cabello, C. (2019). Youtube Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkh8UtuejGw
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