More
than 200 billions of Compact discs have been sold
worldwide since the launching of the first Compact
Disc 25 years ago. On August 17th 1982,
Philipsand Sony jointly developed the CD at a
Philips factory in Langenhagen, Closedto Hannover in Germany: the revolutionary
shift from analog music to digital has just begun
bringing a superior sound quality.
Both companies were collaborating since 1979, but
they never imagined that the entertainment and the
computing industry would also opt for the CD as a
storage system for content. Preliminary discussions
were about the content and the size of the disc: the
capacity of the disc was extended from 1 hour to 74
minutes in order to accommodate a complete
performance of the Beethoven‘s 9th
Symphony. In June 1980, the “Red Book” was
proposed by Philips and Sony containing all
technical specification for all CD and CD-Rom
standards.
The first CD to be produced was the “visitors”
by Abba in 1982. But the real success of the CD was
due to the collaboration in 1985 between Philips and
Dire Straits, one of the most famous bands of the
world. Promoting its sound quality, the CD became
the reference for music quality. The album of Dire
Straits ‘Brothers in Arm” was the first album to
sell over one million copies.
Nowadays, The CD is till very successful after 25
years because of some assets such as digital
quality, disc acceptance and playability. The CD
still accounts for
the majority of the music industry's recording
revenue, and will always be the reference
media for enthusiastic audiophiles. But CD also
allowed to build the
foundations of new technologies and new formats such
as the high resolution SACD audio format.
