Collection: Music - Discs - CD

The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. The first compact disc was manufactured in August 1982, and was first released in Japan in October 1982 as Compact Disc Digital Audio. The CD gained rapid popularity in the 1990s. It quickly outsold all other audio formats in the United States by 1991, ending the market dominance of the cassette tape. By 2000, the CD accounted for 92.3% of the entire market share in regard to music sales. The rise of MP3, iTunes, cellular ringtones, and other downloadable music formats in the mid-2000s ended the decade-long dominance of the CD.