in what years were cassettes and CDs introduced?

A lot of my favorite bands have been around long enough to have had albums released on vinyl, so I was wondering what might have been the first album for each band to be released on cassette and CD. From what I gather, cassette tapes must have been introduced in the mid to late 80s because I have some albums that run longer than 45 minutes, which isn't possible on an LP record, and C Ds came along around the turn of the millennium, but I can't nail down an exact year for either of them. Does anyone know for sure?

CDs have been around since the late 70s, early 80s IIRC, but they didn't become ubiquitous till the 90s, because the cost of making CDs and CD Players them got cheaper.

edited 4th Dec '11 11:37:11 AM by Thenamelesssamurai

Okay, I'm not sure about cassettes either, but thinking that optical media is THAT young is a serious mistake. The Red Book standard ("Compact Disc Audio CD") was launched in 1980, along with records by first adopters.

Cassettes, just Google it. Can't waste my own time on re-typing information I've just read for you, now can I?

edited 4th Dec '11 12:01:03 PM by Litis

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edited 4th Dec '11 2:00:56 PM by Litis

Cassette tapes of one form or another have been around since 1935 but the format as we know it was introduced by the Dutch firm Philips in 1962. Pre-recorded music cassettes were commercially introduced in 1965 but it wasn't until the 1970s that the format really took off. There were also other competing audio tape formats to contend with (like reel-to-reel and 8-track).

Compact discs were first made commercially available in August of 1982. The Bee Gees’ Living Eyes (which, incidentally, has been out of print for many years and is nowadays an expensive collectors’ item) was the first album released in the format.

edited 4th Dec '11 2:08:05 PM by Bananaquit

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edited 4th Dec '11 6:53:26 PM by xexyzl

Just ignore the post if you feel like being a dick.

Wait, Philips gave us cassette tapes, too? They also invented the Compact Disc (together with Sony). Clearly, we Dutch have had a huge impact on audio technology!

Anyway, CDs were introduced in 1982, as has been said before - but from what I've heard, seen and read, vinyl was the preferred format for releasing new music throughout The '80s. Only around 1990-91 did CDs really take over. As an interesting example, the Judas Priest album Painkiller (1990) was released simultaneously on vinyl, cassette and CD, which clearly indicates that the music industry was in a transitional period at the time.

edited 18th Dec '11 3:38:29 PM by MidnightRambler