80s Facts - Cassettes And CDs...

 A mid-1980s TDK audio cassette. Keep a pencil handy.

Those were the days! In the early 1980s, audio cassettes, launched in the 1960s, finally outsold vinyl records and were clearly the preferred technology. This was, in part, due to the rising popularity of the Sony Walkman, launched in England as the Sony Stowaway in 1980. Apparently, pop group Bow Wow Wow were the stars of the first commercially released cassette single in the world ever, which was also released in 1980. Appropriately, the subject matter of the song was cassettes - C30, C60, C90 Go!

Doesn't seem that exciting now? It didn't at the time either, so don't worry.

Of course, cassettes were great fun - recording the Top 40 off Radio 1 on your dad's hi-fi or your radio cassette, hearing the music warble, go muffled and then cut out as the machine ate your tape, re-spooling tapes with the aid of a pen or pencil - we now look back at it all with gooey-eyed nostalgia. 

The 1980s were undoubtedly the heyday of the audio cassette, but the shoulder padded era also launched the compact disc - 1983 saw its debut in England. 

Now That's What I Call Music 4 in 1984 was the first Now to appear on CD and contained a selection of songs featured on the vinyl and cassette versions.

Like most new technology, the discs and equipment to play them on were initially expensive and so the rise of the CD was slow. But by the late 1980s they were outselling vinyl, although audio cassettes, now helped enormously by the cassette singles suddenly flooding the record shops in the last couple of years of the decade (they were launched as a serious alternative to vinyl singles in America in 1987), were still the top seller until the early 1990s.

Curiously, many retro-loving youths of today, brought up with sophisticated iPods, CDs, etc, have a soft spot for the dear old cassette.

Nice, innit? Just keep that pencil handy...

Compact Discs

The Sun, July 1 1982:

Records are about to shrink to less than half-size. New Compact Discs will be on sale before the end of the year.

The mini-records, less than five inches across, can be held in the palm of one hand.

They will have a permanent clear protective coating, which means they won't scratch or wear out. And they will sound better than ordinary albums.

A spokesman for Sony, who are producing the discs, says: "The sound is produced by an optical laser, and is of superior quality."

There's just one snag - the price. Not only are the discs themselves more expensive than today's records, they also need special new equipment to play them on.

But Sony says: "We hope within two years to have prices down to the same as ordinary albums."

A 1983 newspaper advertisement.

The article states that compact discs were due to arrive in England before the end of 1982. Some sources now state that they didn't actually arrive until March 1983.

The discs and players certainly did not come down in price that quickly. Asked if he/she owned a compact disc player in the mid-to-late 1980s, the average geezer/geezette would almost certainly reply:

"You wot? Wot do you think I am - made of money?"

The price was highly prohibitive, and CDs didn't outsell vinyl and cassettes for some years.