With the 1983 mass market introduction of CDs (compact discs), the face of the music recording and retail industry changed dramatically. As the price of compact disc players tumbled from $1,500 to $500 and below, CDs were quickly adopted by music consumers and pushed the long-playing vinyl record virtually off the market.

CDs offered extremely high sound quality, free from the scratches or needle dust "noise" found on vinyl records. Compact discs were the first introduction of digital technology to the general public. Records and tapes had been recorded using analog technology. Digital recording samples sounds and represents them as a series of numbers encoded in binary form and stored on the disc's data surface. The CD player's laser light reads this data and when it is converted back into an electric signal, it is then amplified and played through headphones or loudspeakers. On a CD nothing except light...