Transcripts:
I love physical media, especially because it seems like I'm streaming all of the time. So, it's very nice to get back to physical media, especially compact discs. Well, today we're going to have some fun. We're going to talk about 20 little facts that you probably didn't know about compact discs. It's going to be fun.
It's going to be lighthearted and you're going to love it and maybe learn something. So, sit down, grab a cup of coffee, and let's talk about 20 facts about CDs that you didn't know. [Music] Launched on October 1st, 1982 in Japan. The first commercial kind of pop CD was Billy Joel's 52nd Street. About 50 different albums were released that same day, but Jules was kind of the crowning jewel, the one the mainstream record released that day.
And the first pressing plant was in Lang Langenhagen, Germany. And the very first disc pressed at that plant was a classical one. I want to butcher it. Strauss's eini. I'm just going to put it on the screen. But CDs wouldn't hit the shelves in the US until March of 1983. Originally, CDs were going to be 110 mm. However, all the ones that we have today are 120 mm.
Why? Had to do with a Sony executive. I think he was the president at the time. He insisted that the disc had to hold Beethoven's ninth symphony, which is 74 minutes. Phillips wanted a little one. Sony wanted a bigger one when Sony won. Did you know that in the 1990s, AOL sent out over a billion of their little internet CDs? At one point, one in every 10 CDs produced was for the AOL internet minutes.
And apparently, it's so famous that environmentalists still call the AOL CDs the biggest landfill filler. I had enough of these to tile a bathroom. Commercial CDs are actually printed, not burned. I did not know this one. They use injection molded poly polycarbonate with an aluminum coating and lacquer seal.
CDRs, the kind that you burn, use a dye layer that changes colors as it's burnt. Interesting. And now we know. Apparently, that's why homeburned CDs actually don't last as long as the injection molded CDs, and they fade quicker. [Music] CDs have hidden tracks. I know, you know, if you just let it play, sometimes something starts up minutes later.
But did you know CDs also have hidden tracks in negative time? I did not know this. Some bands would put a secret track before track number one, and you had to manually rewind before track number one. 9-in Nails actually did this. Broken had hidden intros. It was like a beautiful Easter egg on a CD you had to go look around for.
In 1984, Sony released the Disc Man, the D50, and it was a gamble. It sold for $350 then, which would be over $1,000 today. And they actually lost money on it because they figured we can make that up in CD sales. And they were right. Originally, they were going to extend the Walkman brand, but they decided to go with the Discman because the Walkman was well associated with cassette tapes.
And the original ones, well, they were terrible because if you breathed on them, they skipped. But by the '9s, they had put a little bit of random access memory in there. And generally, you could get about 10 to 40 seconds of skip protection. And by 92, Sony had sold over 10 million Discmans. And other companies were selling tens of millions more.
And at one point, manufacturing capacity in Japan, in Korea, and even China was making CD players at such a scale, the only thing that beat it was VCRs. CDs had up to 96 dBs of dynamic range, while vinyl only had 60. However, labels quickly abused it with loudness, increasing the volume on the CD itself. That way, when you're playing on your car or on the radio, it was just louder.
And people generally associated louder with being better. And this wasn't new. Jukeboxes were doing this all the way back to the 50s. The Beatles did it. Well, with more dynamic range to work with, the labels figured, well, let's do that until it's terrible. And the most terrible record ever born out of the loudness war era, My Beloved Metallica, Death Magnetic.
It was released in 2008, and fans got savvy to it because the one that was released on Guitar Hero actually sounded way better. CDs actually saved classical musical labels. Classic music labels. Deutsch Gramophone and Sony Classical saw huge revivals in the 80s and '90s thanks to CDs quiet background and long run time. For the first time, entire symphonies could be fit on one disc.
And I guess we need to thank that Sony executive for insisting on 120 mm versus 110 mm. And in a way, it actually helped CDs become the dominant format because classical listeners generally have more money, I guess. So, they adopted the format way quicker than the mainstream did. So, classical music literally push CDs into the mainstream or at least helped it go mainstream.
Collectors love Target CDs and not the store, which is what I thought it was. It's just a design on the CD itself. First launched in the early 80s, Warner, Electra, Atlantic pressed their discs inWest Germany and Japan, and they had a distinctive target design printed on the label side.
The reason why they're sought after is because they were only made between 82 and 85. Today, collectors hunt them down because they know it was basically a first pressing printm fetch a lot of money on eBay, apparently. We all know the bestselling album of all time was Michael Jackson's Thriller, don't we? But did you know that the bestselling CD of all time was the soundtrack to The Bodyguard? Over 45 million copies were sold and it was released in the boom of the CD Boom.
So most of it was sold on CD. Alas Moriceett's Jagged Little Pill was also in contention as well as the Backstreet Boys Millennium moved tens of millions of CDs but were dwarfed by the 45 million total of the Bodyguard soundtrack. Too funny. In the mid '9s, Columbia House and BMG, the record clubs, you know, the ones that you went to collections for the first time ever because you never sent back that copy of Belinda Carile, th those companies, they shipped hundreds of millions of CDs and accounted for 15% of total CDs sold at one point. They
outsold Tower Records, Sam Goodie, and pretty much all the other retailers combined. And while the music sounded the same, in my experience, they were cheaper. And guess what? I confirmed it. They were made at lowerc cost plants. Sometimes it was just album art. You didn't even get a pamphlet. And CD collectors still to this day consider Colombia House Club and BMG to be second tier as far as collecting.
[Music] The first commercial CD player to launch was the Sony CDP101. And the first year only 30,000 sold in the US. Fast forward four more years over 3 million of just that model sold in the US. In 85 globally 5 million players were being sold and that doubled a year later. And in 2000 nearly a billion CDs were sold globally.
That is a mindbogling number. CD sales peaked in 2000. But when streaming came along and downloading from Napster, well, they kind of went away. 37 billion in 2000 and under 16 billion by 2010. In the US, CD sales bottomed in 2018, selling only 52 million units, which is a single percentage of what they were at their peak. Been a bit of a rebound.
In 2021, sales actually rose for the first time since 2004. Thank you, Adele. However, by mid 2025, this year, UK sales are already down 22% year-over-year. So, while they're not dead, they're not growing like I thought they would be, and I wish they would. So, go buy a CD. Back in the year 2000, there were about 660 CD pressing plants globally, powering one of the most explosive eras in physical music.
Today, well, it's pretty much all gone. Sony D A DC in Indiana still making CDs today. They've been running since 1983. So, good job Hoosiers. Keep making those CDs. And then Sonor Press in Guaw, it's in Germany. They press billions of discs since the 80s. And as of the 2020s, they still make up to 1.5 million CDs per day.
And they're making them for both big labels and small clients. Walk into any Target and look at an Encap and you'll see a bunch of CDs that are labeled K-pop. That's right. CDs are being marketed to the younger generation. It's not for us anymore. It's not Journeys Greatest Hits or the Total Guns and Roses anthology. No, it's K-pop. And these are collectible.
They're packed with artwork, special booklets, and it's amazing because CDs are now being purchased by a younger generation. And despite the collapse of the sales from the year 2000, CDs never really disappeared. And if anything, it's cheaper now to buy them than it was in 1985.
I would encourage everyone to go grab some CDs. If you stream it and you love it, go buy the CD. It's 10 bucks. And 40 years later, the cultural impact of the CD is undeniable. billion dollar record clubs that sent you to collections to shaping how music was mastered and now finding a second life amongst the youth of America. CDs are incredible.
And maybe CD's greatest trick is every time we think they're dead, they crawl out of the grave like a wonderful, beautiful butterfly that's a zombie. A zombie beautiful CD butterfly. Thank you CDs for not dying. If you like this video, check out my video about why people are still collecting CDs in 2025. And it's not for the reasons that you think it is.
I'll link that right up here. Put a cassette video up here. Check it out. Thank you for watching.
