[dvw]

Did anybody here actually buy CD thirty years ago at the very beginning? I still have Beatles' Abbey Road CD that was released before Beatles agreed to release them. If only I didn't open it, it will be worth bucks.

 

[muckyfingers]

I've been buying CD's since 1994 and just started converting them all to FLAC this year. I counted about 1200 CD's and still growing, so it's going to take awhile. Though some I picked up on blowout sales for like $1-$3 here and there and probably will never listen to again so they don't get ripped, either trashed or sent to the goodwill.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Did anybody here actually buy CD thirty years ago at the very beginning? I still have Beatles' Abbey Road CD that was released before Beatles agreed to release them. If only I didn't open it, it will be worth bucks.

 
I bought my first CDs in 1984. I was still spinning vinyl but the lack of noise and the level of clarity of CD compared to my Rega meant I added CDs quickly and LPs very slowly

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Did anybody here actually buy CD thirty years ago at the very beginning? I still have Beatles' Abbey Road CD that was released before Beatles agreed to release them. If only I didn't open it, it will be worth bucks.

 
Even if it's opened, that Beatles Abbey Road CD is till worth $$$.  It's certainly on my "want" list.
 
Some of you may know that I'm a CD collector.  While I didn't start buying CDs until 1987 or so, I have gone back and start collecting CDs that were made in the beginning of the CD era.  In fact, within the last year or so, I located this factory-sealed ELO CD that may have been released in late 1982....
 


 
CD is the first music format of which I saw the birth of.  I still buy a lot of CDs (close to 200 new CDs each year) and it's the format I listen to most (the other is SACD).  I will continue to support CD until the music I want is no longer available on it.
 
Edit:  Here's some photos to part of my vintage CD collection

 

[bigshot]

Where's the long box? CDs always came in those plastic coffins designed to fit in LP bins in the early days.

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Where's the long box? CDs always came in those plastic coffins designed to fit in LP bins in the early days.

 
Long boxes are unique to CDs released in the US.  I still have a factory-sealed CD of INXS' "Listen Like Thieves" in its long box.

 

[bigshot]

I remember when tey made a big deal about helping the environment by going to cardboard longboxes instead of plastic. Yeah, right!

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

I remember when tey made a big deal about helping the environment by going to cardboard longboxes instead of plastic. Yeah, right!

 
Long boxes were always made of cardboard, as far as I recall.  I think you are talking about the plastic jewel cases.  Some releases on CD went from the plastic jewel cases to digipak, the cardboard packaging with the plastic tray that holds the CD.  Personally, I hate the digipak.

 

[bigshot]

There were stock plastic longboxes. Kind of like a blister pack. Only top sellers had custom cardboard ones at first.

 

[proton007]

Sigh....I'm too young for this conversation...For me it was more like cassette tape -> digital (MP3/FLAC), because my parents had a cassette player. The only 'CD player' I ever used was my laptop, that too just for ripping.
 
*Now* my parents have moved over to CD!

 

[bigshot]

My first records were acoustic 78s by Billy Murray and Collins and Harlan. They would be considered horribly racist today, but at 6, I sang along with the lyrics of Bake Dat Chicken Pie and When Tony Goes Over The Top, blissfully unaware of any of that.

 

[OJNeg]

Quote:

Did anybody here actually buy CD thirty years ago at the very beginning? I still have Beatles' Abbey Road CD that was released before Beatles agreed to release them. If only I didn't open it, it will be worth bucks.

From what I understand, CDs were prohibitively expensive when they came out in the 80's. You could get the LP for under $10, so I assume the CD album costed much more. As someone mentioned before, owning an original CD was considered a luxury. I remember when I inheirited my dad's music collection, there were a lot more cassettes and LPs than CDs, though he had come to the states no sooner than 1979.
Quote:

 
CD is the first music format of which I saw the birth of.  I still buy a lot of CDs (close to 200 new CDs each year) and it's the format I listen to most (the other is SACD).  I will continue to support CD until the music I want is no longer available on it.
 
Edit:  Here's some photos to part of my vintage CD collection

I, too, am one of those strange people who still prefers to own the CD rather than just a digital file. Though the price of LP records has skyrocketed, used CDs are cheaper than ever. I can grab 'em for <$5 a piece at my used CD shop or on Amazon. I imagine labels will stop pressing them sometime in the near future, but even so there will be loads of discs available on the used market, just like vinyl.

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

From what I understand, CDs were prohibitively expensive when they came out in the 80's. You could get the LP for under $10, so I assume the CD album costed much more. As someone mentioned before, owning an original CD was considered a luxury. I remember when I inheirited my dad's music collection, there were a lot more cassettes and LPs than CDs, though he had come to the states no sooner than 1979.
I, too, am one of those strange people who still prefers to own the CD rather than just a digital file. Though the price of LP records has skyrocketed, used CDs are cheaper than ever. I can grab 'em for <$5 a piece at my used CD shop or on Amazon. I imagine labels will stop pressing them sometime in the near future, but even so there will be loads of discs available on the used market, just like vinyl.

 
 
Back in 1984 in the UK an LP was about £7 and the CD (if you could get it )  was anywhere from £10 to £15. My first CD player was a 14x 4 Marantz CD63 (£300 about $1300 in 2012 terms) and I used another £100 to buy my first 10 CDs, all of which I still own. As a comparsion my Rega Planar 3 with RB300 Arm and Nagoaka MP11 Gold cartridge was selling for £200. Now (2012) a far superior Marantz CD player can be acquired for $350 and the more or less equivalent Rega turntable will set you back about $890 - go figure !

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

I imagine labels will stop pressing them sometime in the near future, but even so there will be loads of discs available on the used market, just like vinyl.

 
I seriously doubt the music companies will stop pressing CDs in the next 10 years.  Given that CD is still being sold in the millions each year around the globe, I'd think production may decline, but not stopped.  Look at it this way, SACD is still in production and new titles are announced every week....and SACD is a really niche format. 

 

[plantsman]

I'm going to play the old geezer card here as I'm old enough to have been buying recorded music at the dawn of the CD era.  I also worked in both record stores and high end audio shops.  
Despite the "Perfect Sound Forever" marketing trumpets both the early CDs and early CD players did not sound good at all.  Vinyl surface noise was banished but early CDs on even the best CD players that existed in the early and mid 1980s sound brittle, closed in the high end and lacked bass relative to good turntable rigs.  By the late 1980s both the hardware and software manufacturers started to get a grip on the technology and the really grating, brittle sound quality started to go away but CD generally still significantly sounded worse than good turntable set ups especially in the top three octaves or so.   
It wasn't until the mid to late 1990s the CD sound quality started to rival vinyl, theoretical virtues not withstanding. The biggest thing CD has going for it is that it is a more physically robust format than LPs or analogue magnetic tape.  Dynamic range should be a huge plus for CDs but the loudness wars have meant that CDs often only delivered a small fraction of their potential dynamic range. I do, however, listen to my CD player more than my turntable, in part because the typical 17 to 22 minute playing time of an LP side now seems really short relative to the 35 to 50 minutes of a CD, and in part because my phono cartridge is on its way out and I can't afford the roughly $1k - $2k for a newer, better one.  At some point I'll have to breakdown and set up a digital music server but the technology still seems maddingly immature and I do like the physical object of the LP or the CD.