Sony has finally bowed to the MP3, revealing that the last of its MiniDisc players will be sold in March before the format goes to the big tech graveyard in the sky to join the personal cassette player.
Launched some 20 years ago in 1992, the MiniDisc was advertised as ‘The Next Big Thing’ by Sony. It was a physical disc format that could be written to and re-written with audio files that had the same running time and quality as a CD, which before the take-off of CD-R and CD-RWs, was a pretty big deal.
However, Sony being Sony, the MiniDisc player was ludicrously overpriced when it launched in 1992, with the first players costing around £500. Needless to say, a mere 50,000 players were sold in that entire year. Thankfully other manufacturers came along and as such the price dropped, with the likes of JVC and Sharp getting in on the action.
The problem with the MiniDisc was that it was a format for those who already has music in other formats – cassettes, CDs, MP3s and such. You couldn’t really buy albums or singles on a MiniDisc either because record labels didn’t really bother with it. You’d have to have a special stereo with a MiniDisc slot to record from cassette or CD to a MiniDisc, or you would have downloaded music online to put on one via your PC – a process which was pretty rare back in those days.
Although the MiniDisc Player will still be available to buy for the last time next month, it really died out in 2002 when a certain company from Cupertino, California introduced a product called the iPod. From there the MP3 really took off commercially, with the ability to store thousands of songs on one device sounding infinitely more appealing than buying and recording to multiple MiniDiscs.
The format has struggled along ever since, but it looks as though Sony will finally send it to the tech graveyard by the end of the year. Farewell, MiniDisc.