Has it really been a quarter-century since the first compact disc was pressed, finally freeing us from the infernal routine of rewinding our mix tapes? Well sure enough, Philips was kind enough to inform us that its very first CD rolled off the production lines on August 17th, 1982, which history will forever remember -- perhaps unfortunately -- as a copy of ABBA's The Visitors. Nonetheless, this first widely-produced optical disc format would end up changing our lives forever, ushering in the era of lossless copies, easy music sharing, and an unwanted little friend we've come to know as DRM. Now with some 200 billion discs having been sold worldwide -- and probably twice as many distributed gratis by AOL in its dial-up heyday -- it would seem that the original shiny little platter is unquestionably in its golden years, with more convenient or capacious formats replacing it on almost every front. So Philips, the readers and editors of Engadget are proud to join you in saluting the revolutionary product you helped pioneer -- and also offer our condolences that things, um,
haven't worked out quite so well for you in the transition to MP3. If you want to learn some of our (mostly embarrassing) first albums on disc, keep reading after the break...
Peter - Joy Division, "Substance"
Ryan - Beatles, "Help"
Evan - Billy Joel, "Greatest Hits Volumes 1 and 2"
Chris - Peter Gabriel, "So"
Paul - The O.C. Supertones, "Chase the Sun"
Don - Metallica, "Metallica"
Thomas - Mötley Crüe, "Theatre of Pain"
Joshua - The Dickies, "Killer Klowns From Outer Space"
Nilay - New Order, "Substance"
posted August 16th 2007 11:55AM
My First one. Eddy Brickell. What i am is what i am...great now that's in my head all day.
My first audio disc was Marvin Gaye's Greatest Hits. I love the song Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), which at the time was played on a Sony commercial. I will keep that disc forever... or until the media degrades. ;)
Oshean, same cd, same reason. Wonder how many they sold based on that commercial? :D
My first CD was Destiny Child's Survivor. Sadly I lost it on the plain to France.
AKBlade13
Destiny Child's [sic] Survivor, and plain to France (sadly also [sic])... Young people and spelling...
AOL is celebrating.
In AOL's dial up hayday, they used to give out free (reusable) floppies instead of CDs. Those were the days, we used to go snactch up dozens of "AOL Dial Kits" Just so we didn't have to pay for our portable storage. Just makes me wish AOL put all their software on DVD-RWs...
DRM in the form of Macrovision has been available for much longer than that, more than twenty years in fact.
But was there Digital Rights Management before the media were digital?
Finding out this information is kind of depressing for me, knowing that I am older that CDs...
I'm older than floppies. Although, not older than punch cards. Floppy and Hard (insert Nerd LOL)disk drives those were the days.
I bought my first CD player in Oct. '87 when they hit $200. Man, was that thing a POS. It didn't FFWD, and instead of a display it had LEDs to tell you which track you were one. Of course, it only went up to 10.
My first disc was "Communiqué" by Dire Straits.
Dopey me! It was 1985.
And all the old people around me still don't know what they are...
Sometimes funny, but true. If one doesn't keep up with new technologies, one can remain in such a state indefinitely.
To people here, it sounds strange, but there are people who simply don't ever use computers, and therefore couldn't identify if something is a CD or a 3.5" floppy. Of course there are "obvious" things probably most people on there don't know either. :)
Oh, and I think my first CDs were a classical music collection given to me by my parents in the early 90s.
Don't laugh. My first cd was the Lion King Soundtrack. :x
wow i thought i was the only one.
i got it for christmas
Haha that was my first CD too!
Friend of mine said the same thing. Wierd huh?
Same here. They must have had a huge marketing budget for that CD.
Ditto...That was such an awesome CD.
I can't believe my first CD was the GoldenEye soundtrack...
wow... i'm pretty sure that was my first one too.
My first CD was Milli Vanilli...(hangs head in shame)
I was only 7, so cut me some slack.
My first CD was Milli Vanilli - Girl You Know It's True. Given as a gift. And I still have it.
I bet it was a copy and not the original. In fact everything from Milli Vanilli was not original
Whatever, h8rs at Engadget - Abba RULES.
Ditto. I like ABBA... never heard of "The Visitors", though. (And, it hardly bothers me what someone who wasn't even alive in the 70's thinks about anything that was goin' on then, as I expect is the case with most/all 'Engadget-ers'.) :D
(First CD: U2, "The Joshua Tree")
Agreed. And The Visitors was a good album, too. In fact...I'm glad Engadget mentioned this; I wasn't aware that it was the first, but that brightens my afternoon. Ha.
Agnostic Front. I think I owned the disc for at least 6 months before I even got a player!
guns n' roses - "appetite for destruction"!!
my first was the soundtrack to Men in Black
Me too. I believe that has shaped me into the well rounded, gadget freak, obsessive compulsive person I am today.
Ahah, me too :)
I thought it was 1979
First CD was Michael Jackson's Bad cause it had a bonus track on it..."Leave Me Alone"
From what I remember, that was the first CD to be released "day and date" with the cassette and LP. At that time, there were only a handful of pressing plants in the world, and you usually had to wait 6-9 months for the CD to be released.
MC Hammer - Too Legit To Quit
Ditto man. I bought MC Hammer and Boyz 2 Men 'II' at the same time from Zia Records. Oh...those were the days.
I think I bought my first discman (an actual Discman, as it was a Sony product) in 1999, around the time I got my first CD writer. Before that I stuck mainly to cassettes. I think I had a boombox-style CD player a year or so before that.
Oh, I think we all know the Discman. The real question is, How many seconds of skip protection did it have? Mine rocked out with 40 seconds. Almost enough to run 20 feet before it skipped!
Mine had only a measly 3 seconds of skip protection... it sucked balls.
My first cd: Def Leppard's Hysteria
Amazing !!!
My first cd was Windows 95. :3 and i still remember installing Windows3.11 ... 9 to 11 diskettes,and you can pray that any disk don't fail.
First CD was "HALO - JESUS MUSIC" from 1990... I was a hold out. I was young, had a large record and tape collection, and I was broke (read cheapskate). I could buy 3 tapes for the price of 2 discs! I shake my head now, but at the time, it made sense in my frugal teenage head! LOL! Man... more music... less quality... what was I thinking?!?! Money for the girlfriend, I guess! LOL!
Wow, I stopped buying & listening to CDs a couple of years ago. Now I just listen to mp3s. It'll probably be just like when I transitioned from tape to CD. I never touched my tape collection again, even though I kept it thinking I might go back to it someday.
My first CD = Naive Art (Red Flag), 1989. I was a 'po college kid at the time.
im not totally sure what the first CD i bought was but i just bought some the other day.... Underoath - Define the Great Line
I think my first CD was Chumbawamba's Tubthumper.
"I get knocked down but I get up again
You're never going to keep me down."
My First CD: Nirvana - Incesticide
I no longer have the CD-ROM but I have the MP3's from it. :-)
Happy B-Day CD!!! I remember the days we used handle U with so much care. Griping at the slightest smudge. Making sure u went back in ur case. Now we throw u around. Touch ur shiny parts without a care. But just know that we love you and u have changed our lives for ever.
First CD Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle (1993)
my first cd was Prodigy - The Experience