Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the Red Book technical specifications, which is why the format is also dubbed “Redbook audio” in some contexts.^[1] CDDA utilizes pulse-code modulation (PCM) and uses a 44,100 Hz sampling frequency and 16-bit resolution, and was originally specified to store up to 74 minutes of stereo audio per disc.

The first commercially available audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released in October 1982 in Japan. The format gained worldwide acceptance in 1983–84, selling more than a million CD players in its first two years, to play 22.5 million discs,^[2] before overtaking records and cassette tapes to become the dominant standard for commercial music. Peaking around year 2000, the audio CD contracted over the next decade due to rising popularity and revenue from digital downloading, and during the 2010s by digital music streaming,^[3] but has remained as one of the primary distribution methods for the music industry.^[4] In the United States, phonograph record revenues surpassed the CD in 2020 for the first time since the 1980s,^[5][6] but in other major markets like Japan it remains the premier music format by a distance^[7] and in Germany it outsold other physical formats at least fourfold in 2022.^[8]

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]