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Both could record and had a fee applied to them that went to the RIAA that definitely inflated the prices. DAT is actually superior to the CD other than the fact it's tape. That fee is why standalone CD payers do not commonly have burners, the fee is also applied to "audio" discs. Standalone CD recorders will reject any blank CD that doesn't have that "audio" CD label.... one of life's mysteries solved.
The RIAA also tried to get the same thing applied to computer burners, MP3 players etc. Thankfully unsuccessfully.
I have an xp laptop which is very hard to copy discs which Windows can read, different format... It is slowly being loaded with every CD I have. It gets patched into the sterio system. My laptop will burn audio CD's. I have no need for a standalone player now.
I remember when CDs first came out and people complained about how a new album was 3-5 dollars more just because it was on CD versus cassette. The powers to be in the industry said that it was because the technology was expensive and that CDs were expensive to produce. They explained that prices would drop soon once CDs were cheaper to make. Needless to say, that never happened.
Now we can download the album and burn a CD. I don't buy CD's anymore, but buy the album on Amazon and save a copy to disc. They didn't anticipate a standard price for downloads.
I have an xp laptop which is very hard to copy discs which Windows can read, different format...
Any computer can read and burn a regular music CD and you can do so legally because of the Home Recording Act. There is no copy protection, the music industry falsely assumed that the format itself would protect it from easily being copied. They never envisioned PC's in everyone's home that could easily copy them or someone reverse engineering CD's to produce burnable discs.
From my recollection, it went something like this:
At first, it was for the more serious audiophiles. The only dependable cd players were home system components and cds, as other people have mentioned, were nearly $20, more than twice that of cassettes and records. Car audio people were in a real pickle. Early auto cd players weren't all that great, there was quite a bit a skipping. I can only imagine how someone who had put a lot of money into a cassette-centered system felt when cds came out.
I recall a brief period when you could find cds, cassettes and records all in the same store. Although I had heard about how cassette technology might yet surpass cd technology, it soon became clear which way the wind was blowing. After a while, portable, relatively dependable cd players went down in price and I got one as a gift and slowly began rebuilding my music collection. As others have mentioned it wasn't easy at first. It wasn't like there was an amazon or something you could buy cds from, you just had to go out and get them and the selection wasn't that great. Mostly new mainstream releases and some classic rock staples (I recall seeing the Beatles albums in those long cardboard boxes that cds first came in). If that wasn't your thing, you waited, held on to your cassettes and kept buying more cassettes until cds really took off after a few years and the selection widened considerably.
If you're a music fan as I am, it was kind of interesting in a way. Considering you had limited funds at any one time to spend on cds, you began to kind of rank the music you had taken for granted earlier because inevitably, you'd be faced with a tough decision whenever it came to buying a new cd as you slowly began to replace your collection while at the same time buying any new releases you might be interested in.
I grew up in a family that listened to records and bought quite a few myself in the early 80s as a kid when I first started to get into music. But as I got older and cassettes took over, cds came as a bit of a shock. I had forgotten how clear a clean record sounded and how much hiss cassettes had and how they were mixed to make music sound a bit more bland for putting on cassette. Cds were a return to higher fidelity sound and in a way, and they were a lot like small records, especially in how you had to be careful handling them and how instead of rewinding and fast forwarding you simply could play the next song (but of course, no flipping the record).
My parents are boomers and it seemed to work like this and I would bet other people could relate: when I was a little kid, there was a lot of music in the house. My parents bought records and played them a lot. As they got older, and cable tv came into its own in the 80s, music wasn't heard as much except in the car (on a tape) and tv took over. The records became kind of neglected by the time cds came out, so they weren't as crystal clear as they were back in the late 70s-80s, they had been scratched over the years. Cds, due somewhat to their novelty, at least in my own family, kind of brought music back. My dad had a top-notch system built of components he chose himself that would have been outstanding by late 70s-early 80s standards. By about 1990 it hadn't been used much in a long time, but then he got a cd player, added it to the system and started playing the I guess about 10 cds he got initially to play (Led Zeppelin IV, L.A. Woman and Rubber Soul were three I remember for sure). Basically, I think cds brought sound quality back, and ushered back in the high-fidelity sound movement of the 60s-70s which had been largely dormant accept for the most devoted audiophiles when cassettes came to the fore. I think that listening to music on ipods, phones and using streaming services has sort of taken things back in the opposite direction again.
I was sorry Sony Mini Discs never caught on. I liked the size and true portability (made moot now by the MP3 of course).
This history forum is in a sad state when a topic such as "life before CD's" gets to 11 pages while other legitimate history topics struggle to get to 2 pages.
And...then there is the every popular brain-cell destroying "is life in 2010 like 2014" topics.
Most "real history" subjects don't have as direct and immediate an impact on the everyday person.
Basically, I think cds brought sound quality back, and ushered back in the
high-fidelity sound movement of the 60s-70s which had been largely dormant
accept for the most devoted audiophiles when cassettes came to the fore. I think
that listening to music on ipods, phones and using streaming services has sort
of taken things back in the opposite direction again
Sure agree with that assessment. In the 'olden' days I usually listened to the music on cheap 'hi-fidelity' systems. When cds came the music became a revelation to me. I was amazed at hearing things I never heard before. it was like the great rock and classical works were 'reborn' at least for me.
I dunno. I still yearn for the yesteryear of the 8-track tape player.
Here you'd be enjoying some mood music with that special someone. You'd be getting down to business and KACHUNKA! The eight-track would switch to the next track. It had all the romance of a construction site.
Our family didn't get a CD player until around 1990 or so, when my parents won a Sony boombox (w/ CD player and dual cassette deck) from a charity raffle or something. That was around the time the cost of CD players started to fall, so a lot of my friends started buying CDs around that time as well.
Even back then, CDs were usually $15.00-20.00 or so. Before that, my sister and I pretty much had all our music on cassettes...we never really got into vinyl records as we were both children of the early '80s. We didn't realize the quality of the audio on cassettes was relatively poor.
Most "real history" subjects don't have as direct and immediate an impact on the everyday person.
And that my friend is why CityData has a variety of sub-forums to choose from.
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