Photo by Arun Kulshreshtha
This past Christmas marks the 25th anniversary since I got my first compact disc player. I don’t remember exactly what brand it was. Maybe a Teac. [Update: It was a JVC.] It was the single-disc variety and didn’t do much error-correcting, if I recall. It lasted for years, though. I remember it still spinning discs into 1995 or so.
Word when they came out was that CDs would become as affordable as albums were (~ $10) once their manufacturing reached a certain scale. Like a lot of things the music industry says, it turned out to be lies. The suits in the industry chose to maintain the high prices of CDs even as their manufacturing costs dropped through the floor.
I’ve purchased many hundreds of CDs in the 25 years but now rarely break them out of storage. CDs are a relic of the past now that MP3s are so popular. I feel better buying MP3s now, knowing a much greater percentage of my purchase goes to the artist who made it rather than to the record company with its inflated manufacturing costs.
My very first CDs were Eric Clapton’s Behind the Sun and The Police’s Regatta de Blanc and Outlandos D’Amour. My Clapton CD disappeared but I still have my Police CDs, in addition to many, many more in storage.
Update 9 Jan: Turns out I was wrong about getting my CD player for Christmas 1985. It actually was Christmas 1986, meaning that this upcoming Christmas will mark 25 years.
I got a single beam Technics CD player for Christmas in 1985, and a $25 gift certificate for the local mall record store. I bought Dark Side of the Moon and Blizzard of Ozz. I still have the Pink Floyd disc. I was still using the Technics CD player when we lived in Leesburg VA in 2001.
Dark Side of the Moon was one of my early CD purchases, too. I still have that disc somewhere.
I remember when CDs came out, all the musicians griped about how their music sounded, blaming the Japanese remastering for screwing up their sound.
I now remember my CD player was a JVC model, but I can’t seem to determine which model.