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Speaker 1: This is a journey will pop up the value of

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Speaker 1: pleasy releases.

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Speaker 2: The history of sound.

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Speaker 1: Continuing our delve into the history of sound, we've moved

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Speaker 1: from the phonographic cylinder, to vinyl, to cassette tapes to

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Speaker 1: arriving today at the compact disc and joining us today.

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Speaker 1: Assistant Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia,

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Speaker 1: Nathan Smith, good morning.

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Speaker 3: Good morning, Hey, how are you?

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us?

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Speaker 3: No, no, no problem at all.

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Speaker 1: Who invented the earliest known version of the compact disc?

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Speaker 3: A well, the early known version of compact list was

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Speaker 3: created by a guy named James T. Russell back in

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Speaker 3: the sixties, and they actually had a bit of a

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Speaker 3: pattern for it in nineteen seventy. It wasn't until Sony

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Speaker 3: and Philip actually kind of got a hold of the

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Speaker 3: pattern and actually really developed it into kind of what

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Speaker 3: we know it is today. But yeah, it took a

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Speaker 3: little while for James to kind of get his dues

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Speaker 3: for creating the city, but he actually did, and he

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Speaker 3: you know, I think they ended up paying him back

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Speaker 3: in the eighties. Yeah. Well, I actually think he's still alive.

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Speaker 3: I think he's like ninety two or ninety three.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, how does the technology work? Make is these

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Speaker 2: shiny silver discs? And is the silver part important?

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. So obviously the disc was kind of created,

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Speaker 3: so it's basically an evolution of like laser disc technology.

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Speaker 3: And then obviously, you know, the music is kind of

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Speaker 3: recorded as a digital kind of file and this kind

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Speaker 3: of gets mastered and then it kind of essentially gets

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Speaker 3: etched onto the disc into like ones and zeros, and

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Speaker 3: then the laser is able to kind of pick up

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Speaker 3: those ones and zeros and kind of decode it back

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Speaker 3: into what we kind of know today. But the reason

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Speaker 3: why kind of became so popular because it was all

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Speaker 3: about kind of the evolution of technology and you know,

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Speaker 3: kind of having like the better quality kind of files.

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Speaker 3: Of course, when James actually originally created the technology in

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Speaker 3: the sixties and seventies, he was actually a classical music buff.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and he was just a little bit sick

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Speaker 3: and tired of the wear and tear on his CDs,

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Speaker 3: so he wanted kind of to kind of create something

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Speaker 3: that would kind of remove that wear and tear. So

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Speaker 3: we kind of created this like contactless type listening device. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: So so you so you were in theory you would

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Speaker 3: never have to touch a CD. CDs were kind of

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Speaker 3: kind of then presented to the public in you know,

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Speaker 3: the early eighties. I think they kind of first got

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Speaker 3: released in like nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty two. There's

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Speaker 3: a few different kind of theories as to kind of

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Speaker 3: what the actual first CDs were actually created, But some

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Speaker 3: of the really big popular ones that really popularized the

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Speaker 3: content was obviously Brothers in Arms like Distraits. They kind

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Speaker 3: of got released in nine point eighty two and went

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Speaker 3: on to have huge success.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned Phillips and Sony joining together to get to

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Speaker 1: get this out. I mean, they were certainly were then

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Speaker 1: two absolute juggernauts of the audio world. They must have

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Speaker 1: they must have known they were absolutely one hundred onto

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Speaker 1: a winner.

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Speaker 3: Oh totally, absolutely, they were onto a winner. I mean,

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Speaker 3: obviously it was all about quality and just like the

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Speaker 3: evolution of kind of formats, which I mean, as you're

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Speaker 3: kind of previously discussed in the previous episodes, obviously starting

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Speaker 3: with cylinders and then going to vinyl and then going

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Speaker 3: to cassettes, and now we kind of found ourselves with

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Speaker 3: this shiny kind of compact disc which was actually really

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Speaker 3: cheap to kind of manufacture in only costs. The wholesale

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Speaker 3: cost of a CD back in the eighties was about

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Speaker 3: a dollar dollar fifteen, and they were selling. I mean,

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Speaker 3: I don't know about you guys, but I remember CDs

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Speaker 3: being relatively expensive.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they were like to buy a bread.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, to buy a brand new CD back in the

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Speaker 3: nineties was twenty thirty dollars, but they only cost about

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Speaker 3: a dollar maybe two dollars to make at the moment,

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Speaker 3: wow moment, So they were making the most of it.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. I still think that a llure of this, the

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Speaker 2: shiny silver.

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Speaker 1: It was like a shiny thing, something from space nature

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Speaker 1: yees yeah, yeah, shy discs.

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Speaker 3: But it was also too like having you know, like

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Speaker 3: it was like laser technology. Sounded kind of cool, you know.

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Speaker 3: So everybody wanted a CD player and they weren't that

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Speaker 3: cheap either. They were about one thousand dollars back in

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Speaker 3: the eighties for a really expensive one, I was about

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Speaker 3: fifteen hundred. Generally speaking, they kind of decreased to about

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Speaker 3: three to five hundred dollars.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they.

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Speaker 3: Kind of did get cheaper as kind of time went on, too.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you think it's not a needles stylist

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Speaker 2: going into a groove of record vinyl record but they

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Speaker 2: worked without problems. If something got start cours skating, they

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Speaker 2: were driving crazy.

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Speaker 1: For a while.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, neither know. They didn't really like scratches, and

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Speaker 3: they didn't like thinkerprint.

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Speaker 2: Now that's weird as than I, yeah, and skate around

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Speaker 2: when you're in the car, that movement. They didn't like

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Speaker 2: that either, which is.

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Speaker 3: A little ironical. I actually sold as reasonably indestructible, like

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Speaker 3: as in, you would buy a CD and you would

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Speaker 3: never have to kind of replace it because it was like,

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Speaker 3: you know, contactless kind of listening kind of technology. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: you're dead right the scratches and then you know, you

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Speaker 3: could like you know, lose them quite easily too, because

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Speaker 3: I was reasonably small as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Nathan, I really feel like they were marketed to

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Speaker 1: us as just what you had to have, like next

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Speaker 1: level sound quality, because I slowly worked through my very

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Speaker 1: healthy record collection replacing everything.

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Speaker 2: With a CD. Because I was one of these idiots, it.

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Speaker 1: Was led to believe, and I wasn't the only one

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Speaker 1: that you know this, you can't have better than this.

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Speaker 3: I feel like we were a little bit wod We

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Speaker 3: now when you look back, Oh, totally, absolutely. I mean

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Speaker 3: my format was during the eighties and nineties was obviously

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Speaker 3: satis and I literally had thousands of years, yeah, quite

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Speaker 3: so many, and I spent a small fortune on them

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Speaker 3: as well over the years. And now I'm kind of

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Speaker 3: going through the phase of actually, you know, replacing my

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Speaker 3: records with new vinyl copies, repeating my problem yea as consumers. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: but that's all right, it's kind of fun. And like

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Speaker 3: you know, CDs are still relevant to this day. People

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Speaker 3: still release them. Like my daughter, for example, has been

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Speaker 3: buying you know, Taylor Swift CDs just so she can

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Speaker 3: kind of you know, have something in her hand that

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Speaker 3: she could kind of connect with a little bit more

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Speaker 3: physically to be enjoyed about that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely mate, And like a lot of people didn't

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Speaker 2: sell their records like a LISTA did back in the day,

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Speaker 2: but I'm planning now even places like Facebook, Marketplace and

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Speaker 2: that people selling CDs. And then sometimes it's heartbreaking to

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Speaker 2: see people selling two hundred for fifty dollars and you

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Speaker 2: think invested, like you what people invested in those those

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Speaker 2: discs when they were.

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Speaker 3: Knew Oh my goodness, Yeah, absolutely they do sell for

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Speaker 3: kind of pretty cheap these days, which is kind of

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Speaker 3: a good thing and a bad thing. I mean, at

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Speaker 3: the end of the day, we kind of pass things on,

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Speaker 3: and you know, things kind of change and technology changes

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Speaker 3: and things are kind of happening. But obviously, like the

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Speaker 3: CDs was like the basis for like other technology as well,

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Speaker 3: Like they use the CD format for like DVDs and

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Speaker 3: Blu rays and.

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Speaker 2: In the computer.

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Speaker 3: And I was yeah, yeah to us.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.

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Speaker 3: And it wasn't just audio as well, like obviously it's

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Speaker 3: just the idea of kind of storing data as well.

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Speaker 3: So in nineteen eighty five they created the CD ROM,

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Speaker 3: which was actually like which was actually a disc that

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Speaker 3: would kind of be read by your computer with data

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Speaker 3: on it. And then in nineteen ninety they actually created

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Speaker 3: the CD R, which is a rewriteable kind of disc

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Speaker 3: that you could kind of like make mixtapes and burn

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Speaker 3: CDs and very kind of things. And that changed everything

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Speaker 3: yet again.

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Speaker 1: And I feel like the DVD replacing the VHS tape,

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Speaker 1: it was probably even a bigger you know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: there wasn't such a thing about it, but it was

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Speaker 1: probably an even bigger life changer for oh yeah, absolute media.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think we kind of forget how many

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Speaker 3: CDs were sold. I think there was estimations at the

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Speaker 3: fortieth anniversary of CDs in you know, I think it

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Speaker 3: was like twenty twenty four that two hundred billion CDs

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Speaker 3: were sold during the life of it runs. That's very, very.

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Speaker 2: Impressive phenomenal considering how many weren't necessarily just new things,

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Speaker 2: but things that people were upgrading, like like we all

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Speaker 2: did from our.

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Speaker 3: Vinuere that's right, and some of the obviously the big

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Speaker 3: successes was one of the first big Australian releases to

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Speaker 3: really benefit from the CD revolution was obviously John Farner

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Speaker 3: with with spring Jack. That was the really big one

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Speaker 3: of the first commercially mass driven, locally produced artists, and

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Speaker 3: obviously other other artists like Midnight Oil, Savage Garden, Kylie

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Speaker 3: Minogue in excess. They all benefited greatly from the advent

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Speaker 3: of CDs, and they did sell. Vinyl records are still around,

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Speaker 3: but not in the same quantity that CDs were in

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Speaker 3: the eighties and nineties, and.

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Speaker 1: Of course some benefiting for all the wrong reasons. They

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Speaker 1: were like the cassette tape, they were of course hugely pirated.

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Speaker 3: That was definitely.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it was too easy to You didn't get that

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Speaker 1: with albums. You didn't come back from Bali with a

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Speaker 1: bunch of Partis albums.

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Speaker 2: No and you.

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Speaker 3: But you'd make mixtapes on CDs as well, mixtapes that

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Speaker 3: you would record off the radio with your and your

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Speaker 3: finger currently waiting for the record one until the right

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Speaker 3: song comes around. You'd kind of do something kind of

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Speaker 3: similar to CDs and you exchange them, you know, I

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Speaker 3: remember kind of doing that. You'd make mix mixtapes for

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Speaker 3: your friends and you'd say, I'm listening to this at

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Speaker 3: the moment, check this out and go from there. And

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Speaker 3: it was how we kind of socialized. This is like

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Speaker 3: what it was before social media.

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Speaker 2: And what not, so exactly was very very different social

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Speaker 2: by a piraty.

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Speaker 1: Well, Nathan, do you remember what your first CD was?

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Speaker 3: Oh, my goodness, I've got memories of buying a CDC's

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Speaker 3: The Razor Edge when I was about twelve years old,

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Speaker 3: the album that had Thunderstruck on the But but it's

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Speaker 3: so like, it's so hard for me to kind of

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Speaker 3: choose what, like my favorite FED was. I spent so

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Speaker 3: much effort in listening to them back in the eighties

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Speaker 3: and nineties, but yeah, all the like Nick Cave Records

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Speaker 3: as well. And yes, I was very pleased to hear

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Speaker 3: that you bought Green by.

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Speaker 2: Rim first one we play play Orange Crush this morning.

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Speaker 3: I was, what a song?

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Speaker 2: Is that? Funny? You got to raise his edge by this.

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Speaker 2: You probably looked a bit like Angus at the time.

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Speaker 3: Probably.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this morning to take our

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Speaker 1: History of Sound series into its compact disc phase.

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Speaker 3: No worries, yeah, good, good luck with tomorrow.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, we're going.

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Speaker 3: Digital world.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: By the way, before before before I dip out, I

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Speaker 3: just want to say, for people that kind of want

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Speaker 3: to learn more about it, go to n f s

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Speaker 3: A dot gov dot au. There's plenty of articles and

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Speaker 3: information on there and curated coal all kinds of things

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Speaker 3: you can dig yourself into. Please jump into their dot dot.

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Speaker 2: Au National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. Brilliant. Thank you,