"On Oct. 1, 1982, in Japan, when Billy Joel‘s 52nd Street became the first-ever CD to go on sale, two electronics giants had been pushing for years to switch from the beloved vinyl LP to the shiny new digital-optical disc. Sony in Japan and Philips in Eindhoven, Netherlands, had invented the compact-disc hardware, and they were aggressively lobbying the world’s biggest labels to provide the software – music – to go with it.
Up to that point, the labels wouldn’t cooperate – not even CBS Records, Sony’s longtime partner for years before the electronics company bought it outright in 1987. “If there would have been rotten eggs available, they would have thrown them at me,” recalls Jan Timmer, then head of Philips Worldwide, of an Athens, Greece, music-industry conference where he attempted to introduce the new format to a roomful of defensive record executives. One was Jerry Moss, head of A&M Records, who pounded his fist on a table. Back then, skeptical label salespeople called the CD “Jerry Shulman‘s Frisbee,” a reference to CBS’ market-research director, the label’s top CD evangelist.
Over time, the execs wore down thanks to a sustained charm initiative from Sony-Philips bigwigs, plus a scrappy coalition of label marketers working with MTV, radio stations and even CD-friendly stars such as Stevie Wonder. The disc kicked in by the late ’80s, delivering a boom that continued until the internet, MP3s and Napster nearly killed it off by the mid-2000s. (Using similar technology, DVD and even CD-ROM and digital storage became standards in their own industries.) Today, CDs are mostly relics, confined to audiophile collections and concert merch — although some retailers see early signs of a vinyl-like comeback. Here’s an oral history of the introduction of the CD:
The Early Days
Michael “Mickey” Schulhof, former president of Sony Corp.’s U.S. division: When I listened to the first digital-audio recordings in Tokyo, I loved it. There was no surface hiss. You could access any of the tracks — something you could not easily do with a cassette or an LP. Sony asked me to be the liaison and the negotiator between Sony and Philips.
Herbie Hancock, jazz musician: There’s a record called The Piano that I recorded in Japan. It was one of the first direct-to-disc recordings. Yasohachi Itoh was the production coordinator. Months later, he was able to give me a copy of that CD. I think they made a few of them at the time. The sampling rate wasn’t 44.1, which is the standard for CDs. So I had this CD, and I had no device that could actually play it." - Billboard.com
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