The compact disc was the go-to format for many music followers for many years. Launched in 1982, it rose to dominance in 1988 when it overtook vinyl gross sales for the primary time.
From there, CD was king for over a decade, persevering with its dominance close to undisputed till 2002, once we first noticed streaming providers begin to nip at its lead. Even then, it took many extra years for streaming to say the highest spot, with the Recording Trade Affiliation of America (RIAA) reporting that Spotify and co. didn’t dethrone CDs as music’s high vendor till 2014.
Trying again, a key motive for CD’s progress got here in 1985 when Dire Straits launched their album Brothers In Arms. It was the primary CD to interrupt a million gross sales,and a key album that opened listeners as much as the advantages of CDs.
At a technical stage, CD was the primary mass-market audio format to seize a complete album’s price of music with out the necessity for A and B sides. On common, a CD can take 74 minutes of music, whereas one aspect of a vinyl file can retailer solely round 20 minutes’ price. CD gamers have been additionally a lot simpler to make use of, making them extra alluring for normal music followers.
There was additionally the benefit over vinyl information’ delicate nature, and having to verify to get issues together with monitoring drive and RPM proper. For those who didn’t, you risked getting poor high quality replica, jumpy playback, and even doubtlessly damaging your LP. With a CD you simply plonk the disc in your participant and press ‘Play’.
On high of that, the newer format introduced easy quality-of-life enhancements, together with with the ability to skip tracks with the push of a button and – from 1993, when recordable-CD know-how grew to become cheaper and extra extensively out there – the flexibility to ‘burn’ your individual CDs and make ‘combine tapes’ of your favorite songs.
That’s to not point out the sonic enhancements, with CDs introducing digital recording and providing a wider potential dynamic vary than rival codecs. The truth is the standard stays stable, however not top-tier, to at the present time.
For those who’re listening to music on a streaming service similar to Spotify, you’re getting decrease than CD high quality. Which is why Neil Younger famously mentioned listening to music on the service means you’re solely listening to “half” of what he recorded.
So why didn’t CDs’ reign as the highest format final whether it is in some ways higher than Spotify? And why hasn’t it loved the identical resurgence as vinyl lately?
On the latter query, for people who missed it, vinyl gross sales have been on the up for years. CD gross sales have been typically in decline or flat by comparability. This was very true in 2024 when, in line with the Digital Leisure and Retail Affiliation (ERA), vinyl gross sales grew by 10.5 per cent, with 6.7 million information offered within the UK. A flat 10.5 million albums have been purchased on CD throughout the identical interval.
Answering why CD isn’t rising like vinyl is difficult, particularly amongst audiophiles. At a top quality stage, many hi-fi fans argue that vinyl’s analogue nature provides it a heat and added “authenticity” that CDs can’t match. So the talk about which is best continues to be very a lot raging.
At a sensible stage, lots of the file store house owners and followers we communicate to are additionally fast to spotlight the intangible advantages vinyl brings as a motive for its renewed recognition. These embrace the group at file retailers, a lot of which double as fashionable bars and occasional joints today, and special-edition treats similar to customized art work and bundled pullouts. This makes lots of sense contemplating trendy artists’ renewed curiosity in vinyl.
For those who take a look at gross sales numbers it’s really new artists promoting special-edition vinyl variations of their albums with these extras which are drawing probably the most consideration. Taylor Swift, Chappel Roan, Sabrina Carpenter and Fontaines DC account for 4 out of the 5 best-selling information from 2024, in line with the Official Charts Firm/BPI.
The one ‘older’ band to make it in was Oasis, who had a spike in gross sales of their 1994 album Undoubtedly Possibly. And that’s a far cry from the standard previous guard – Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and so on – who dominated vinyl gross sales only a decade in the past. This factors to causes past pure audio high quality and ease of use as a driving drive for vinyl’s progress. Possibly it’s individuals eager to personal the music, quite than simply stream it. Possibly it’s pure fandom.
No matter it’s, we all know it’s not audio high quality, which is considered one of CD’s solely actually sturdy benefits over Spotify streaming within the present world. For followers of bodily media, if it was, then SACD – Sony and Philips’s short-lived try within the Nineteen Nineties to interchange the CD with one thing even higher – would now be the world’s main bodily media. Conversely, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal or Quobuz, which all provide higher-than-CD high quality streams, could be dominating streaming, not Spotify.
Whatever the reply, the CD continues to be wholesome, and the truth that gross sales are holding regular is an achievement in itself, contemplating the dire straits it was in a decade in the past when gross sales have been plummeting year-on-year. This, plus artists’ willingness to proceed releasing music on CD, together with particular editions, for followers of the format, means that CDs received’t be going away any time quickly.
