At 07:18 PM 30/12/03, Andrew Hime wrote:
quoted 2 lines Random trivia, I wanna say the first Fiona Apple album and a Fatboy Slim
>Random trivia, I wanna say the first Fiona Apple album and a Fatboy Slim
>album were available on MD in the UK.
Yeah, a lot more releases came out on MD in the UK, Europe and Japan than
in North America. I think Mute UK released some stuff on MD, for example,
but the only large North American labels that released many MD titles were
Sony and associated labels.
I remember back when MiniDisc was first introduced by Sony, there was
another new format called DCC (Digital Compact Cassette - sort of a hybrid
of DAT and regular cassettes) introduced by another company (Phillips, I
think). The flagship HMV store in Toronto had a big display of MD and DCC
releases along with players you could check them out on, and has it set up
as a "which format do you prefer" challenge of some sort.
The problem with that challenge, though, was that none of the major labels
were behind both formats. Sony was behind MD, and I think PolyGram and
Warner were behind DCC. And the indies were completely ignoring both of
'em. So from the perspective of selection (which is all the casual music
fan really cares about), both formats sucked.
And not only was the "software" limited for both formats, but this all took
place only a couple of years after CDs had taken off. So consumers had no
interest in getting into another audio format when they were still busy
replacing their vinyl & cassette collections with CDs.
Anyway, DCC died a well-deserved death, and while MD pretty much died in
North America, Sony was smart enough to heavily market it in other regions
like Japan as a recordable format to replace cassettes as opposed to a
replacement for CDs. That basically saved the format, and allowed it to
come back to life in North America a few years later (albeit on a fairly
limited basis).
Of course, the introduction of cheaper MP3 players in the last few years
has dealt the MD format a pretty serious blow, and some worry that Sony's
decision to stop making pre-recorded MDs means that they might pull the
plug on the format entirely at some point. But as long as someone somewhere
is still selling blanks, I'm not too worried.
Greg
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