The first artist to sell a million copies on CD was Dire Straits, with their 1985 album Brothers in Arms.[42] One of the first CD markets was devoted to reissuing popular music whose commercial potential was already proven. The first major artist to have their entire catalog converted to CD was David Bowie, whose first fourteen studio albums (up to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)) of (then) sixteen were made available by RCA Records in February 1985, along with four greatest hits albums; his fifteenth and sixteenth albums (Let’s Dance and Tonight, respectively) had already been issued on CD by EMI Records in 1983 and 1984, respectively.[43] On 26 February 1987, the first four UK albums by the Beatles were released in mono on compact disc.[44]
The growing acceptance of the CD in 1983 marked the beginning of the popular digital audio revolution.[45] It was enthusiastically received, especially in the early-adopting classical music and audiophile communities, and its handling quality received particular praise. As the price of players gradually came down, and with the introduction of the portable Discman, the CD began to gain popularity in the larger popular and rock music markets. With the rise in CD sales, pre-recorded cassette tape sales began to decline in the late 1980s; CD sales overtook cassette sales in the early 1990s.[46][47] In 1988, 400 million CDs were manufactured by 50 pressing plants around the world.[48]
An Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) is a standard, 12cm optical disc format for storing high-fidelity, uncompressed digital music, using tiny pits read by a laser in players to reproduce sound, holding about 74-80 minutes of stereo audio. Co-developed by Sony and Philips in 1982, it uses the “Red Book” standard (44.1 kHz, 16-bit PCM) to replace analog formats like vinyl and tapes, offering superior sound and becoming the dominant music medium before digital downloads.
The top 10 best-selling CD albums of all time :
