FEATURE:
Music Technology Breakthroughs
IN THIS PHOTO: A Philips technician gives a demonstration on how to use the new compact disc (C.D.) on 7th March, 1981 in Paris/PHOTO CREDIT: AFP/Getty Images
Part Nine: The Compact Disc
___________
FOR this instalment of Music Technology Breakthroughs…
PHOTO CREDIT: @brett_jordan/Unsplash
I am turning to something that many malign and may not consider to be that great. Vinyl and cassette sales are rising at the moment, whereas it seems like the compact disc has stalled somewhat. I think that most music lovers prefer vinyl over compact disc, and there is this retro love of cassettes – many artists are putting albums out on this format still. I think that the last year was a bad one for the humble compact disc:
“The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) just released its midyear compilation of recorded music industry sales data for 2020. Although the numbers follow trends that have existed in the industry for a few years, they hit a couple of important milestones: music downloads now bring in less revenue than physical products, and CDs are all but dead.
CDs represent the most astonishing change since last year. In 1999, at the music industry’s all-time revenue peak, CDs garnered $13 billion in sales, or almost 90% of music industry revenue. As file-sharing began to take its toll on the industry and revenues fell, CDs were the main casualty. Last year CDs only brought in $614 million or 5.5% of total revenue.
CDs’ year-over-year decreases in revenue hovered around the 20% from the mid-2000s until last year. But the downturn from the first half of 2019 to the first half of 2020 was 48%; CD sales were cut almost in half over the last year. CDs brought in only $130 million during the first half of this year; that’s only 2.3% of total industry revenue. CDs are now worth less to the industry than every category of music distribution other than tiny ones like ringtones and music video downloads”.
PHOTO CREDIT: @homajob/Unsplash
I want to bring in an article that looks at the history of the compact disc and why it was such a step forward in terms of technology and convenience:
“The story of the CD started way back in 1957 with experiments involving the rudimentary video disc by the Italian Antonio Rubbiani, that stimulated an entire generation of scientists to think along the lines of digital technology.
Almost 12 years after this, Philips started work on the Audio Long Play (ALP) disc that used the laser technology and which rivaled the traditional analogue vinyl records. The ALP discs played for longer times and occupied less space than their vinyl counterparts.
Under the guidance of the technical director (audio) in Eindhoven, the Philips team tried many experiments with the digital disc technology, including the idea of quadraphonic sound that required a disc as big as 20 cm in diameter. These experiments were later abandoned.
However, in 1978, the project took off on a more serious note and Philips launched the Compact Disc Project. The aim of the Compact Disc Project was for the new format to eventually replace both the analogue video equipment and the Compact Cassette Tape. Both were popular technologies at the time, that had been in use and established for a good many years.
The name for the project (decided in 1977), Compact Disc Project, was chosen by Philips with the hope that it would bring to peoples’ minds, the Compact Cassette’s success. Philips, by then, had started paying more heed to the work done by its digital audio research department. All this research into the project led to a very interesting juncture.
Philips, having already released the commercial laser disc player in to the market, was ahead of its competitors in terms of the physical design of the compact disc. However, Philips lacked the experience of digital audio recording to develop the compact disc any further.
On the other hand, Sony, that was also working alongside to develop the Compact Disc, had exactly the opposite problem to contend with. Whereas it had over a decade of experience in developing and implementing the best digital audio circuitry, it lacked the know-how to make the actually physical CD.
As a result of these developments, in 1979, during a conference in Japan, Philips and Sony stunned the world with the announcement that both the companies would jointly develop the Compact Disc. Thus, a new deal was forged, and the two companies worked together for the next few years.
In the year 1980, Philips and Sony, in general acceptance of certain specifications regarding the CDs, brought out the Red Book. The name was attributed to the colour of the cover of the first publication.
The Red Book contained specifications that included the size of the disc, the recording details, the sampling, and other standards, many of which remain unchanged even today.
The CDs could be played in stereo systems, had a diameter of 120mm (making it portable and smaller than the vinyl record), and could hold an immense amount of data, much more than the vinyl record or the cassette did.
The size of the CD has an interesting story to it: Philips’ idea of a 115mm CD had to be shelved because Sony insisted that the longest musical performance should fit on to the disc, which was Beethoven’s entire 9th Symphony, at 74 minutes, and the size of the CD was increased to 120mm.
Soon after, Sony and Philips parted ways and started working separately, trying to produce their own CD-drive equipment. The first commercial CD drive was released a month earlier by Sony on 1st of October 1982, making it a notable event in the history of CD development. The CDP-101 Compact Disc Player by Sony hit the market first in Japan, followed by Europe. It did not reach the shores of America until the early part of 1983.
Sony beat Philips once again for a second time when it released the first portable CD player in the year 1984. The time was ripe for commercial CDs to make a foray into the market. The first commercial CD to be pressed was Visitors by ABBA, the Swedish pop group. Soon after this, the first album, Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, followed.
In spite of the concerns of the major music labels, the popularity of CDs soared and over a thousand different singles and albums were released in the first year alone”.
Maybe it is the case the compact disc is not really as relevant now as it was but, from 1982 until today, it has been a big part of people’s lives. Compact discs are on sale and artists still release their music on this format. I guess, with digital revolution and popularity, music hardware and physical formats are going to struggle a little. We have read about the history of the compact disc. I was interested to know when it started to really take off and hit its peak. This NBC News articles provides more examination:
“The digital music revolution officially hit 30 years ago, on Oct. 1, 1982. While you may be surprised to learn that the heralds of the coming age were, in fact, the Bee Gees, it probably comes as less of a shock to learn that Sony was at the very heart of it. After years of research and an intense period of collaboration with Philips, Sony shipped the world's first CD player, the CDP-101. Music — and how we listen to it — would never be the same.
Today the CD player might be seen as something of a relic, since our smartphones, iPods and satellite radios provide seamless access to not only our entire music libraries, but to nearly every artist or track available. We can dictate any song or album to an app and have it playing in seconds, or download a new single by visiting an artist's Facebook page.
In such a world, the idea of carrying around a disc loaded with just 10 or 12 tracks and switching it out every hour sounds positively stone-age. But the MP3 and streaming media are not just the CD's replacements, but its descendants. The future of music in fact made its unofficial debut, believe it or not, in the hands of the Bee Gees.
It was on the BBC show Tomorrow's World in 1981 that the Bee Gees publicly demonstrated CD technology (and a new album, Living Eyes) for the first time. Artists were excited about the format — the prospect of a high-quality, track-separated, non-degrading medium was enticing, though many were still skeptical of digital encoding. But music industry heavies like David Bowie and renowned conductor Herbert von Karajan were quick to embrace it, and soon the likes of Dire Straits would hit a million sales and cement the CD's position as the new standard for music.
It wasn't until later in the '80s that things really took off. Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms sold a million CDs in 1985, suggesting that the format had finally hit its stride. It wasn't long before other artists were selling millions upon millions of their albums in CD format. The Discman, introduced in 1984, and the CD-ROM format, enabling computers to read the discs, further accelerated uptake.
The rest, as they say, is history. Since that time, hundreds of billions of CDs have been shipped and sold — the numbers are near-impossible to track, since the easily duplicated digital data led to an enormous increase in piracy and counterfeiting, not to mention the billions of copies and mix-CDs made by normal users.
Music CDs peaked in 2000 with global sales estimated at around 2.5 billion. Soon (legal) digital downloads began to replace physical media for many music buyers. Though its numbers are on the decline, CDs are still produced today on the order of hundreds of millions, and it will be many years yet before the world's CD factories shut their doors.
The size and shape of the CD, as well as its capacity, portability, and versatility, have been a major factor in how music has been developed and consumed for decades. Albums were written to fill it, new formats like the DVD were made in imitation of it, and entire new trends in media resulted from it. The Compact Disc started the digital revolution for music in the '70s, and we're still feeling the effects”.
I am going to end with an article that charts the rise and fall of the compact disc. I am a big fan of the C.D. - even if some others feel it is outdated and clunky. Whilst one cannot have the same listening experience as vinyl, a compact disc offers portability and cost saving. I got my first single on compact discs in the 1990s. I really liked the fact that this was technology more reliable than the cassette in many ways – it was less difficult to damage and one, if buying an album, could skip tracks easily. It was a very big part of my music-listening life – and the compact disc remains important to me and so many other people.
The Guardian examined the fortunes of the compact disc back in 2015. They made some interesting points regarding how its success has sort of faded since the heyday:
“By the 1990s, the CD reigned supreme. As the economy boomed, annual global sales surpassed 1bn in 1992 and 2bn in 1996, and the profit margins were the stuff of dreams. The CD was cheaper than vinyl to manufacture, transport and rack in stores, while selling for up to twice as much. Even as costs fell, prices rose. “It was simple profiteering,” says Stephen Witt, whose new book How Music Got Free chronicles the industry’s vexed relationship with the MP3. “[Labels] would cut backroom deals with retailers not to let the price drop. The average price was $14 and the cost had gotten down almost to a dollar, so the rest was pure profit.”
Jon Webster bristles at this claim. “What’s fair? The public says. Supply-and-demand says. There were ignorant campaigns by the likes of the Sun and the Independent on Sunday saying that these things cost a pound to make. Well, that’s like saying a newspaper costs 3p to produce. That doesn’t include the creativity and the marketing and the money it costs to make the actual recordings.”
Whether or not the prices were justified, CDs sold in their billions and flooded the industry with cash like never before. This enabled labels to invest more heavily in new talent – Campkin suggests that Britpop might not have happened without the CD windfall – but it also funded misguided A&R frenzies, wasteful marketing and excessive pay packets. “In the 90s we were awash with profitability and became fat, to be honest,” says Webster.
PHOTO CREDIT: David Brandon Geeting
The fall of the CD, like its rise, began slowly. When file-sharing first took off with Napster in 1999 and 2000, CD sales continued to ascend, reaching an all-time peak of 2.455bn in 2000. Tech-savvy, cash-poor teenagers stopped buying them but most consumers didn’t want (or know how) to illegally download digital files on a slow dial-up connection. So the market remained steady, artificially buoyed by aggressive discounting.
It was the 2001 launch of the iPod, an aspirational premium product which made MP3s portable, that turned the tide. “Before that the MP3 was an inferior good,” Witt says. “Once you had the iPod, the CD was an inferior good. It could get cracked or lost, whereas MP3 files lasted.” Not pure, not perfect, but sound for ever.
The compact disc has proved surprisingly tenacious. It still dominates markets such as Japan, Germany and South Africa; it makes for a better Christmas present than an iTunes voucher; and it has some hardcore enthusiasts. Jeff Rougvie is even planning to set up a boutique CD label to reissue rare and out-of-print albums. “It defies conventional wisdom but so did Ryko at the time. There’s an audience.” But, insists Stephen Witt: “It’s dying. It will go obsolete like the floppy disc did. It just always takes a little more time than you’d think”.
Next year marks forty years since the commercial compact disc was released into the world. I think they will be in circulation for many years to come. It must have been hugely exciting for consumers and artists alike when the compact disc was launched. I still think there are years left in the honest and enduring compact disc. Even if other forms and technologies have taken its place, one cannot argue that, in its day, the compact disc enjoyed…
PHOTO CREDIT: @brett_jordan/Unsplash
A magnificent regency.