In the autumn of 1982 – exactly 40 years ago – the first CD went on sale. When Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” released in Japan at the same time as the first CD player, sparked a musical revolution that lasted almost two decades and made the once undisputed king of music, the vinyl record, suddenly seem dated. bulky.

It may have taken several years for this “new laser-powered digital record player” (as the press at the time described it) to become available and appear in every home along with silver records by the end of the decade. 80s, but until the beginning of the new millennium, this was the main way we listened to music. It is significant that in 1988, 400 million CDs were produced in 50 manufacturing plants around the world. Shelves of countless digital records that rise above the walls of our homes like huge music libraries have now become a universal phenomenon. The digital storm that was just around the corner had not yet been heard.

It happened all of a sudden when, in 1999, the Internet jumped at ever-faster speeds and Napster, an online music sharing platform, emerged. Songs now reached our ears compressed into digital files and music didn’t need a physical shell, it no longer needed record stores, LPs and covers. All you needed was a computer and a fast internet connection. Even more so today, when popular streaming platforms such as Spotify promise music with lossless quality comparable to crystal-clear high-definition sound on a CD.

But is the compact dead? Thodoris Cantoulas, veteran discography artist and currently Digital Minds Commercial Director, makes the following prediction: “CD will not die as there are still devices and large record collections in homes, but great reissues and new albums with beautiful packaging and, now at more affordable prices.

Another professional in the field, Spilios Lambropoulos, who has been a commercial manager at Public stores for many years and is currently a business consultant, comments: “The number of CDs will gradually decrease as their playback media will also disappear. If you have nowhere to play them, why would you buy them?” he emphasizes and continues: “However, the market will still be geared towards collectors, systematic (over 40 years old) or casual, who will be looking for deluxe special editions. A very good example of this in recent years has been the case of Korean pop music (aka “K-pop”), which had a turnover of €400,000 in Greece in 2019 – a huge figure for the CD market.”

“The market will continue to be geared towards collectors, whether systematic (over 40) or occasional, who will be looking for deluxe special editions.”

It is interesting to note here that from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) 2021 report, we learn that CD revenue increased for the first time in the new millennium last year, with a particular rise in Asia. “Of course, these are the most “niche” (specialized) communities, i.e. it’s classical music or heavy metal,” Spilios Lambropoulos tells us, who, as he adds, “not coincidentally supports music stores around the world, but also in our country.”

We will find one of these “special spectators” if we reach the pavilion of the Opera cinema, which connects Akademiyas street with Panepistimi street. There are still old shops of classical records, for example, Opera by Ilias Poturidis. In talking to him, we learn that there is indeed an enthusiastic audience that regularly visits his store and orders records, living proof that the CD market – even if it concerns a niche audience – is still alive. “Actually live, in terms of recording,” adds Elias Potouridis himself, noting that “the products of European companies such as Harmonia Mundi, Alpha and Arcana are small masterpieces with perfect performance, impeccable sound and beautiful covers.” He believes that the digital record will probably never die because, in his words, “there will be nothing to replace superior sound and its obvious advantages over vinyl, its conveniences big and small: it’s easy to transport, that you don’t have to change sides.” to avoid scratches…

Returning to the origins of the CD, we are talking to Konstantinos Zouganelis, musician and restaurant owner. “When the CD came along, records became available that were already out of print or hard to find in vinyl form,” he tells us, who grew up with music himself. His father Makis Zouganelis owned “Remetzo” in Mykonos and he remembers one day in the 80’s, to get the music the store’s DJs needed, they even had to look for it in record stores in London. “With the advent of the CD, a large part of the discography became available. The music became popular, now everyone could listen to it,” he tells us. And what, in his opinion, has happened with the advent of digitalization? “Now it is so easy to find and listen to any music you want that the music product seems to have no value. When something is offered to you so generously, so easily, you don’t appreciate it. The modern child does not know what it means to go through the process of leaving the house to take the bus, leave the city center, go to the record store, ask the salesman what record to buy, listen to it soon with headphones and look forward to returning home to listen to it in the world. This whole process puts you in an intimate, passionate relationship with the subject,” emphasizes Konstantinos Zouganelis.

Krissa Oikonomopulu, speaking for Syd Records and Psirri’s Barret Bar, tells us something about the “benefits” of the CD: those – oh few – DJs who prefer the CD for their sets to a laptop and digital because it’s a guarantee of sound quality,” he tells us. It’s this sense of the “physical” in their hands that cannot be replaced by the immateriality of digital music — what Ilias Potourides memorably calls “a platonic relationship with what you desire.” It seems to be a fact that despite its shortcomings, misfortunes and premature decline, the CD, forty years after its birth, still manages to give the object of desire music lovers tangible, pleasant and perfect form.