Kingston, Plymouth music store owner recalls CDs’ arrival 41 years ago

It was 41 years ago this week that music consumers first encountered the compact disc.

“It was on Aug. 17 of 1982, at a factory outside the city of Hanover in Germany, that the band ABBA received a very particular honor,” Time magazine reported in a 2015. “…A CD of the band’s album ‘The Visitors’ was pressed that day. And it wasn’t just any CD — it was the first CD ever manufactured. The new technology would go on sale in Japan later that year, and in other markets around the world the following March.”

Ric Tomasi, who owns Music Unlimited in Kingston and the Music Box in Plymouth — both of which still sell CDs and vinyl — recalled his first CD.

“It was March 23, 1987, when I got the Whitesnake self-titled album at Tweeter,” he recalled, noting that even though CDs hit the market a few years earlier, they weren’t readily available everywhere. “Even when I went to Tweeter that day, there were probably only about 24 CDs available. But I remember having my Sony Discman, mowing the lawn, listening to that CD.”