In a world still obsessed with tape, the emergence of laser-guided music in 1989 was a big step both in terms of music production and sound quality.
The Compact Disc was a spin-off of the Laserdisc technology, and on this day 31 years ago a prototype of an optical digital audio disc was demonstrated at a press conference called "Philips Introduce Compact Disc" in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Later in 1989, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force (Prominent members were Kees Immink and Toshitada Doi) to design a new digital audio disc consisting of around four to eight persons.
The first test CD was pressed in Hannover, Germany in 1981 and was a recording of Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie (in English language, An Alpine Symphony), played by the Berlin Philharmonic and conducted by Herbert von Karajan.
The Compact Disc reached the market in late 1982 in Asia and early the following year in other markets. On 17 August PolyGram produced the world's first mass-produced audio CD containing classical music: Claudio Arrau's Chopin piano waltzes. The first pop music CD was ABBA's album The Visitors.
This event is often seen as the "Big Bang" of
the digital audio revolution.
With the advent of the MP3 in the 2000s, the sales of CDs has dropped in seven out of the last eight years. Digital music has usurped the popularity of the Compact Disc.
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