From the moment Edison unveiled his talking machine in August 1877, there was a race to create recordings with greater fidelity and realism. The technology led us from wax cylinders to rotating discs to vinyl records and compact discs.
But then something weird happened around 2000: consumers started becoming apathetic when it came to high-fidelity music. Why? The MP3. The convenience digital files offer trumped their inferior sound. But leading up to the rise of the MP3, dozens of companies kept pushing for ever-better-sounding music technologies.
Sony had the MiniDisc, which wasn’t much a hit outside of Japan. There was Super Audio CD, which was a joint venture of Sony and Philips, the people behind the original CD. It was up against HD-CD, which eventually became the property of Microsoft. But none of these new physical formats mattered.
Digital files killed them all.
© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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