CD’s initially started off as music on discs or audio format in the
mid-to-late 1980’s. CD-R’s (R means recordable) then became popular
when being produced cheaply. CD ROM’s (ROM means Read Only Memory) then
shortly followed to provide data discs for computers which can not be
written on.
CD-Rs – written to once only. This obviously didn’t help if you had
made a mistake in creating your CD and was a waste of a disc, which was
expensive back in those days. Unlike a cassette, where you could record
over and over (do you know anyone who still owns a cassette these
days?). Therefore, the CD-RW (CD-Rewritable) was created which means
you could write over the data several times. The discovery of CD duplication and CD copying has also helped to keep the compact disc alive.
CDs today are used in all sorts of industries today. Obviously, the
music industry is the main source of most of the discs we have around
the house. However, over the past 5 years, CDs have become an essential
tool for marketing, selling, promoting, learning, informing and many,
many more. Examples are:
Promotional CDs – marketing companies use them as handy aids to distribute either by post, or to hand them out at conferences
Music/Audio – Artists use them to record albums and also use as language learning aids.
Training – You can put a whole training manual onto 1 CD which is far cheaper to produce and much easier to send.
Software – This is the most used second to music.
These are but just a few uses for CDs.
We all receive CDs in the post as part of product recognition or
sales. Newspapers give us freebies with either music or software. CD printing
has allowed these forms of marketing to be customized to improve the
effectiveness of the overall campaigns. At the moment the demand for
CDs is on the increase and looks to remain that way for the next few
years anyway. However, just as it’s predecessor, the cassette, the CD
may be superseded by the USB stick.
Keith McGregor is a partner of Strawberrysoup, a web design agency with offices in Chichester and Bournemouth. Strawberrysoup specialise in creative web design, content managed websites, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing and graphic design
