On October 1, 1982, Sony ignited a digital audio revolution with the release of the world’s first commercial compact disc player, the CDP-101 (above), in Japan. It signaled the dawn of a new audio ...

The following story ran in the first-ever issue of SPIN in May 1985. Compact discs and compact disc players are the hottest things to hit the audio market since cassette tapes and players. However, ...

Compact discs were sold as the durable alternative to vinyl - but anyone who opens the case of an ageing CD may be in for a nasty surprise. Earlier this year, US web designer Dan Koster found 15% of ...

An obsolete form of optical media known as the "Compact Disc" celebrates its 25th birthday tomorrow. In a press release issued Thursday, Philips said a staggering 200 billion of them were produced ...

Back in the 1980s, Peter Giles knew that the fledgling music format, the compact disc, came with some compromises. CDs were smaller than vinyl record albums. That meant the end of the 12-inch album ...

On October 1, 1982, the first commercial compact disc, Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” was released in Japan. In the 30 years since, hundreds of billions of CDs have been sold, Joel has stopped recording ...

Many people tend to associate musical nostalgia with the scratch of a needle against a vinyl record, but for me, it turns out a laser beam piercing the reflective surface of a spinning CD has the same ...

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Rolling Stone may receive an affiliate commission. Why do CDs get such a bad rap? After all, it wasn’t that ...

So the Compact Disc is in terminal decline, it seems. Everyone is streaming, so those charity shops once stacked high with boxes of discarded vinyl records now have stacks of old CDs instead at a buck ...