It seemed that by the time '93 rolled around, many of the kids at my school had cd players.
I didn't get one till the Christmas of '94, and that was just a cd walkman. Shortly afterwards, I got some speakers.
I got an actually cd player two years later that allowed me to play up to three cd's and came with a shuffler (it was sure noisy!).

I don't really remember a time when CDs were not mainstream. Where I live I think since around 1988/89. But I might be a bit biased though because there was a CD player in our family before I was even born.

I got my first CD stereo (also with a tape deck) in 1989. I was one of the last people among my peers to get one. I'm thinking 1988ish is when many people had them. I'm guessing around 1986 is when people first started buying CDs.

I got my first CD stereo (also with a tape deck) in 1989. I was one of the last people among my peers to get one. I'm thinking 1988ish is when many people had them. I'm guessing around 1986 is when people first started buying CDs.


Wow, I never knew CDs were popular that early! I remember seeing CDs in music stores at the local malls as early as 1989, but figured they were only for the rich. It must have been where I grew up because some of my friends were still using cassettes into the 90s as well.

Wow, I never knew CDs were popular that early! I remember seeing CDs in music stores at the local malls as early as 1989, but figured they were only for the rich. It must have been where I grew up because some of my friends were still using cassettes into the 90s as well.


The first CD I remember any of my friends buying was in 1986. It was either Whitney Houston's debut CD or Phil Collin's "No Jacket Required".  And they bought "Abbey Road" not long after that.  By 1989, I was already working full time (and still living at home) so spending $10 to $15 on a CD was no big thing.

Going off track, now you are making me think of what was the last "album" I bought.  I think it was "Tango in the night"  Fleetwood Mac or "Kick" INXS.

I would say about the mid to late 80's then it became mainstream until the early 1990's.

They first broke big with listeners in higher income brackets, so classical, jazz, and New Age were among the early marketed CDs in '82-'83.  The players themselves were clunky and expensive and the discs sounded flat.  BUT the silent passages really were silent for the first time.  I remember playing with my sister's housemate Tom's CD player in 1984.  As a musician, he had a synthesizer and some recording equipment too.  So he was the type of poor college student who blow his dough on a CD player.

More and more people got CD players throughout the eighties and the price came down.  I got one with xmas and grocery clerking money in late 1989.  It was a Sony such-and-such with all the bells and whistles for $300.  I had the drawer replaced in 1999, and it still works.  I have it in a stack of disused hi-fi!

The incentive to buy the CD was bonus tracks.  Sometimes as much as 40 minutes of material appended to the original album.  The LP was killed off in mainstream music marketing by 1992. 

My gripe is CD's were more expensive than LP and cassette, initially because they were "new."  Thus, the CD would be $18 instead of $10 or $12.  The CD never dropped back to the LP price even after LP and tape were marginalized formats.  A lot of people griped about this.  However, now I'm watching the CD die off and I'm forced to accept digital downloads!
::)

Dire Straits Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums to be marketed as a CD.  That was released in 1985.  I would say that sometime shortly after that most albums offered you the option of CD format

The LP was killed off in mainstream music marketing by 1992.

and now the LP's are probably being sold in a vintage store.

However, now I'm watching the CD die off and I'm forced to accept digital downloads!


That's what everyone's doing these days.

Dire Straits Brothers in Arms was one of the first albums to be marketed as a CD.  That was released in 1985.  I would say that sometime shortly after that most albums offered you the option of CD format


That was also the first CD to be a million seller so it really represented a turning point, along with Whitney Houston's first album and No Jacket Required. We Are The World was more of a single purchase or via cassette/LP. There was also the rise of the CD single that replaced the 45s. Thus, 1985 was basically the year that the CD came of age, even if waited until 1991 when CD sales passed cassettes. That occured around 1989, with cassette singles briefly popular in the late '80s/early '90s. My parents didn't even buy a CD player until late 1988/early 1989 when they purchased the Dirty Dancing album, and even well after that they still preferred cassettes over CDs not just because cars didn't have them yet, but also due to still being cheaper and that my mother had a portable cassette player (Walkman). I do notice a sharp dropoff of casette titles though in my parents' music collection around 1994 or so, especially since CD-ROM became mainstream in computers around then giving more options to listen to CDs.

The absolute peak of the CD's popularity was between about 1994 and 1998, when digital devices first came out. You didn't hear the media say "new album", but rather "new CD", which is still heard vestigally today. But CD singles were also the first to be killed off by the rise of downloads around 2001 or so, while throughout the 2000s and into the early part of this decade, the CD as an album purchase has gradually been replaced by digital music. A combination of MP3s, Desktops, Laptops, MP3 docks, and later tablets/smartphones has caused the CD to go the way of the cassette. My parents still occassionally buy a new CD, but I don't see the purpose when you can listen to it for free online anyways (and have been doing so since 2006, except for the occassional nostalgic use).

They first broke big with listeners in higher income brackets, so classical, jazz, and New Age were among the early marketed CDs in '82-'83.  The players themselves were clunky and expensive and the discs sounded flat.  BUT the silent passages really were silent for the first time.  I remember playing with my sister's housemate Tom's CD player in 1984.  As a musician, he had a synthesizer and some recording equipment too.  So he was the type of poor college student who blow his dough on a CD player.

More and more people got CD players throughout the eighties and the price came down.  I got one with xmas and grocery clerking money in late 1989.  It was a Sony such-and-such with all the bells and whistles for $300.  I had the drawer replaced in 1999, and it still works.  I have it in a stack of disused hi-fi!

The incentive to buy the CD was bonus tracks.  Sometimes as much as 40 minutes of material appended to the original album.  The LP was killed off in mainstream music marketing by 1992. 

My gripe is CD's were more expensive than LP and cassette, initially because they were "new."  Thus, the CD would be $18 instead of $10 or $12.  The CD never dropped back to the LP price even after LP and tape were marginalized formats.  A lot of people griped about this.  However, now I'm watching the CD die off and I'm forced to accept digital downloads!
::)

I didn't buy a CD player till 1991, by this time CD's were cheap enough for me to afford the pricepoint over an LP or a cassette tape. Well for me it wasn't so hard, the music store I worked at had CD's new for $12,11, 10 or 9.99 and with my discount it was as cheap as picking up a $8.99 cassette.
Even so, I believe for most, like me, it wasn't until I could really hear the difference in sound quality with decent speakers or headphones what a CD could do. Once I got some good Polk Audio's there wasn't any reason to put up with hissing and breaking cassette tapes any more. Plus by that time CD-R/RW were out and I started my first adventure into making mixed CD's instead of tapes and that made making mixed tapes CD's a lot easier than before.  ;)

The late 80s. But cassettes still outsold them a little ways into the 90s.

But cassettes still outsold them a little ways into the 90s.


That's true. I listened to cassettes throughout most of the '90s until I got my first CD player in 1997.

I was a career girl in 1988.  At that time I regarded myself a semi-audiophile.  That said, I held out buying a CD player until 1988, despite hearing about CDs for about 5 years.  By then a large number of my peers had CD players - for some, like me, the CD players were fairly new.  I was in my late 20s, agewise.  I was still a big fan of vinyl at that time.  But my music purchases quickly turned to predominantly CDs from that point on.  (I rarely bought recorded cassettes; however I'd frequently "roll my own".)

8)

That's true. I listened to cassettes throughout most of the '90s until I got my first CD player in 1997.


All right, glad to see that I wasn't the last person to buy a cd player other than my grandparents!

That's true. I listened to cassettes throughout most of the '90s until I got my first CD player in 1997.


and I still have my CD player after 18 years.

All right, glad to see that I wasn't the last person to buy a cd player other than my grandparents!


I think we didn't buy one until about 1997 either.

Actually a quick check finds that our CD player wasn't manufactured until 1998 so we bought it sometime in 1998!

We actually had a cd player in our car back in 1985!!! Our first cds were the same as a lot have previously mentioned... Dire Straits, Whitney's debut... plus Julio Iglesias, Five Star, Barbra Streisand etc. I suppose I stopped buying cassettes completely in 1993 or 1994.

and I still have my CD player after 18 years.

I have several cd players  :)

I have several cd players  :)


are they still playable?  ???

are they still playable?  ???

Yes  ;)

Yes  ;)


mine plays but not as great as they used to when I first bought it.

I don't even own an i-pod  :P

We actually had a cd player in our car back in 1985!!! Our first cds were the same as a lot have previously mentioned... Dire Straits, Whitney's debut... plus Julio Iglesias, Five Star, Barbra Streisand etc. I suppose I stopped buying cassettes completely in 1993 or 1994.


Wow, that's pretty damn amazing actually. I can remember my parents getting their first car with just a cassette player, so that couldn't have been before the early 90's at least, and we didn't have a car with a CD player in it until 2003.