The Compact Disc was quite a revolution when it came out. With a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz and a 16 bit rate, CDs marked the shift to digital music. Unfortunately, it seems to have fallen from being the playback medium of choice. These days, people either buy vinyl records because “they sound better” (especially when played on your vintage hipster record player you bought from Urban Outfitters) or MP3s online for the convenience. And noone even thinks about cassette tapes anymore.
27 years ago, today, marks when the first commercial CD players hit the market. Sure it was in Japan, but they always get the good tech first. The CDP-101 was hardly affordable either: $2,200 if you wanted one, so that you could listen to any one of the mere 113 albums available at release. Then those were another $40 a piece, don’t forget. But that didn’t stop Sony from moving 20,000 of these units in a single year.
So today, we can set aside the hate of the music industry (might be hard, considering there isn’t one anymore) and say Happy Birthday to one of the greatest data mediums of all time.