Twenty-seven years ago today, Sony introduced the CDP-101 to market: The $2,200 piece of electronics (pictured at left) was the first compact-disc player, and the company went on to sell 20,000 units over the three months following its debut. In addition to the hardware, Sony issued 50 of its titles on CD at a price that would equal between $33 and $45 in 2009 dollars; the “first” entry in the compact-disc catalog was Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, and a bunch of other albums from Sony’s corporate rock, Japanese pop, and classical units fell in line behind it. Is there a dusty copy of one of the 50 titles after the jump in your library? MORE »
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Format Wars
Happy Birthday, Compact Discs
Format Wars
Courtney Love Is Not Happy About Kurt Cobain’s Starring Role In “Guitar Hero” Either
Were you kind of cheesed off when you found out that the Kurt Cobain avatar in the forthcoming installment of Guitar Hero would be able to sing songs by the likes of Bon Jovi and Bush? Well, it turns out that Kurt’s widow Courtney Love is none too pleased about the development either, as evidenced by a string of Tweets she sent earlier today that complained about this appropriation of her husband’s license and foresaw an awful future in which he’d be forced to virtually mime Madonna. Not that! MORE »
Format Wars
Mariah Carey To Star In Her Very Own Issue Of “Elle”
Mariah Carey’s forthcoming Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel may have a title that’s in need of a copyeditor, but the inside is going to look like a magazine: Its liner notes, which Island Def Jam concocted in concert with some employees at Elle, will be 34 pages long and chock-full of Mimi-centric editorial, as well as ads for products like Elizabeth Arden, Angel Champagne, and the Bahamas Board of Tourism. The reason for this partnership? Well, let’s just say that it’s not because Carey is a big fan of Elle’s editorial style. MORE »
Format Wars
What Have You Done With Your CD Library? (If You’ve Done Anything With It?)
One of our wonderful commenters posed this question in the wake of finding out that people were actually plunking down money for digital copies of Michael Jackson albums: What are people doing with their CD libraries these days–keeping them, transitioning over to digital storage, shifting to vinyl, or giving up on the whole idea of “owning” music altogether and switching over to a streaming service? MORE »
Format Wars
BBC Subjects Young Child To Ridicule, Confusion For Purposes Of Revealing Shocking Fact That Walkmen Are Old
The five best realizations that 13-year-old Briton Scott Campbell came to during a week when he was forced to sport a Walkman in place of his iPod, and roundly mocked by his schoolmates: MORE »
Format Wars
Mos Def’s New Album Available In “Dry Clean Only” Format
When I was a kid, I thought that children’s books labeled “educationally sound” were actually supposed to make noise. So you may be more savvy than I when you read about The Music Tee, which the press release claims is “an innovative new T-shirt that literally weds music and fashion by embedding digital music in the shirt.” Embedding in the shirt? Does that mean that someone would be able to command Mos Def’s The Ecstatic–which is being released in the format on July 7–to play merely by feeling me up while I’m wearing one of these enhanced tops? Hot damn! MORE »
Format Wars
Chicago Will Be Smooth No Longer
At the top of the hour, Chicago smooth-jazz stalwart WNUA will flip from its 22-years-entrenched format to the Spanish-language programming design known as “Mega,” in the latest example of the decimation of the format beloved by so many cabbies that’s taken place over the past two years. But for the first time in my extensive reading on this topic, I’ve found out just why radio companies seem to be fleeing from the sultry sounds of “Piano In The Dark” in droves: MORE »
the biz
Sony Decides That Now Is The Time To Launch A New Physical Format
CNet brings the news that Sony Music is experimenting with a new twist on the CD format called the Blu-Spec CD, so named because the masters are made by cutting the discs with a blue laser (like Blu-Ray discs), and not an infra-red one as is customary; the change in lasers apparently results in a more accurate digital signal being transmitted. Will audiophiles be convinced to drop an extra dime on these discs (which, apparently, can be played the CD player you own right now—well, if you haven’t gone all-digital yet, that is) because of their purported higher quality? More on this new format from a site about CDs and the Playstation 3: MORE »
Format Wars
SlotMusic To Arrive In Stores This Week, Land In Clearance Bins Six Months From Now
The major labels’ latest attempt to jumpstart the physical-media market, the microSD card-with-album format known as SlotMusic, will start trickling into Best Buy and Wal-Mart outlets this week. The cards will retail for… $14.99. For a one-gigabyte memory card and an album, and the possibility of liner notes or cover art or that old standby of uselessness, cell phone wallpaper also being included. Sure, $14.99 is lower than the price of some one-gig microSD cards, but at a time when Americans are cutting back on spending, you’d think that people would be more likely to try a new format of entertainment–even with music files that are free of DRM–if they thought they were getting a deal of some sort. Especially since the cards are teeny tiny, and the whole “you can sync it with your portable music player right away” chatter doesn’t hold water with iPods and iPhones, which don’t have microSD slots. Oh, music industry, you never fail to misunderstand how real people who don’t get promo copies of every CD under the sun actually, you know, consume your product. Anyway, if you want to be the first on your block–or, hell, in your zip code–to try this new format out, the full list of “the 40 top artists” involved in this boondoggle after the jump. MORE »
