MiniDisc

looks so cool

Was it popular in Africa and the Middle East as well?

Nothing really went wrong, I mean they did see adoption.
I guess a big problem was that the disks didn't get similar mainstream adoption as CDs and portable CD players were good enough for most people.
Also they didn't get that long of a run until mp3 players became a thing and surpassed the storage capacity of MiniDisc.

>Only in Japan and Europe
>only popular in 2 of the biggest markets in the world

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The point was rather the """"only""""
>only popular in two huge markets

Why do Americans ruin everything for the rest of the world? DAT never caught on because of American music industry jews lobbying against it

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It was only popular in Japan, and didn't get huge adoption in "Europe" as a whole.
Japan isn't exactly a huge market in global terms, and sporadic adoption in Europe is more impressive, but still wasn't widespread was it.

MP3 happened.

Sony "Sony'd" the technology. A lot of music that people liked weren't available, and audiophiles weren't really interested in buying all their albums again, but compressed.

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It was almost ten years before MP3 players became widely available.

>What went wrong?
Sony music/legal division had far more power than hardware division, otherwise data minidiscs would have used the exact same discs as the music ones. They could have been dominant; they're reliable as fuck compared to floppies, zip drives, and bare CD/DVD. Had they done it right, we might still be using a 2-4GB version today.
But Sony kept it locked down until it was ten years past their window of opportunity.

>10 years
Maybe *1 year(s) before mp3.

>they did see adoption
I doubt 1% of Yuros ever owned a minidisc, never mind 3rd world backwoods like Burgersville. To be popular (then), you had to be popular in pre-recorded sales, albums etc - and minidiscs never were. Think it was the same fucked up Betamax mostly, all the pre-rec sales and hire shops were VHS, and fuck stocking 3 formats of everything

Nothing.
There were plenty of players and decks available, and blank disks were sold pretty much everywhere here in Europe. I used it for a really long time as my portable way of listening to music, after switching from a cassette Walkman,
You can still buy brand new blanks from Sony at a reasonable price. Even some recent hipster albums are getting released on the format, just for the novelty of it.

This

atrac

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*skips*

Didn't get stilled hard enough.

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Mine didn't.

It also didn't fit in your pocket, my MD Walkman did.

American record companies lobbied hard against it due to its recordability and audio quality, there weren't really any pre-recorded MDs to buy and then by the time it was able to get some steam, CD writers and MP3s were getting pretty cheap and common.

You're not impressing anybody user, and for your information CD players did fit in people's pockets during the 90's.

>You're not impressing anybody user
I'm not trying to.
>And for your information CD players did fit in people's pockets during the 90's
Maybe if you were a kid wearing those suspender pant thingies (Don't know their name in English) or a pseudo-hippie who wore Jinco jeans, no serious piece of clothing had pockets that big.

skinny jeans are a zomer thing, user...

They are. And those can't even fit MD players.
But regular jeans/pants don't fit fucking Discmen in their pockets. Not today, not in the 90s.

ATRAC was a well engineered compression format but the problem was that they were just starting to get popular by the time MP3 players and Napster were too. Also even though you could record high quality ATRAC, Soundgate made it almost impossible to get those files back off your player until like version 6.

You're thinking of overalls, but perfectly normal pants could fit a discman in the back pocket no problem.

>Maybe if you were a kid wearing those suspender pant thingies (Don't know their name in English) or a pseudo-hippie who wore Jinco jeans
Baggy clothes were a 90's thing, and almost every body wore baggy clothes. Even suits were made bigger than they should have been, and carrying a portable CD player was a non issue. Mini discs didn't catch on, because the price premium, and lack of content didn't attract that much consumer attention.
CDs, and tapes were already a thing, and digital media were soon to be available.
Sony just fucked up with marketing, pricing, and licensing. End of story.

This one should.
Minus the CD, of course.

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>pseudo hippie
>jnco
You forget cholos, ravers, skaters, gang bangers, and even the stoners could fit a CD player in their hemp poncho pouches.
Also most music lovers had to carry a backpack for extra discs anyways, so the space you saved with me players, and discs were moot.

>putting in pocket
>when clipping to belt/front of pocket is superior

90s kids did not stuff cd walkmans in their kangaroo pouch, they carried their boomboxes around, and shared their impecabble taste in rap music etc with everyone. It was a more communal era

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literally all my pants can fit 7inch tablets so I bet they can put Discmen

Kek, everybody knows portable CD players were usually sold with a neck or shoulder strap and carrier. I'd post a pic of my D-555 but phoneposters can't post images here any more.

>straps
>better then clips
I shiggy diggy

>they carried their boomboxes around
Up until some baggy pants wearing ethnic takes it by gunpoint. Boom boxes were more for the front porch.

>You're thinking of overalls
Thank you.
>Perfectly normal pants could fit a discman in the back pocket no problem.
I don't remember back pockets being that big, but maybe I'm wrong, since I never had to carry a discman.
>Mini discs didn't catch on
Again, just in the Americas. They were a pretty common sight over here, and as I said players and blanks were sold at every chain store, and even some small ones.
>because the price premium
Compared to what? I remember MiniDisc blanks being on par, and then becoming cheaper than good Type II tapes (Maxell XL-II, BASF/Emtec Chrome Maxima and UX-Pro, the ones I used to buy back then). And they sure as hell sounded a lot better and were less of a hassle to record.
I've never heard of those subcultures, I don't think they were a thing over here. Maybe ravers were, but I've never seen one listening to music outside their car or an actual rave.
>Also most music lovers had to carry a backpack for extra discs anyways
Meanwhile, I just carried two extra MDs in my pocket. And since they fit 74 minutes just like a CD, I could even squeeze two shorter albums on some discs.
My player was one of the most basic models, it didn't even have the option for a clip. I used to clip my cassette walkman (RIP AIWA HS-G35MkIII) to my belt though, it was quite nice.
So the cargo pants meme is true?

They did pretty well with the GameCube

I'm not saying they're better or worse but it's a truth that most CD players came with either hard points for attaching a lanyard or a case with such a strap.

Best is the Sports Discmen with an upper arm strap for pure humor though.

>cargo pants meme is true?
I don't own any cargo pants, just khakis and jeans

>Again, just in the Americas
They didn't really catch on in Europe though, and iirc the US was the largest consumer market in the world during minidisc heydey, so if it didn't penetrate that market then it wasn't really successful.

Thats not minidisc retard

>Meanwhile, I just carried two extra MDs in my pocket
Congrats you were able to enjoy all of your Celine Dion jams. Everyone else used a backpack to store their leather CD wallet to enjoy their music.

like this? you'd get cop-whacked for wearing this rig going into a church in current year

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not him but more like this

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I just tell them I have autism.

>They didn't really catch on in Europe though
I know this is anecdotal evidence, but I remember people completely skipping (heh) discmen over here. It went from walkmen to a mix of walkmen, MD players and those USB stick MP3 players. Very rarely you'd see someone with a hard drive-based player (including iPods) or a discman.
>Celine Dion
Hell nah. I used to buy LPs for literal cents because everyone was moving to CD. Then I dubbed them to MD. Or shit, I even used an external sound card with S/PDIF output feeding straight into my MD deck to record stuff I downloaded. That was during a recent short period when my Clip + broke and I had a phone with a potato for a headphone amp, though. Now I have a rockboxed iPod 5G and I couldn't be happier.
>Everyone else used a backpack to store their leather CD wallet to enjoy their music.
I remember CD wallets being a thing, but they were something you took to parties or to your car if you happened to have a CD player fitted in it.
My commute at the time was 1h long, so I was set with three MDs. If I took a longer trip or whatever I did put my MDs and other stuff like my SLR in a bag not unlike this one

>could only get audio in, not digital files out, for much of the life of the system (excepting hyper expensive pro units), thus reducing quality to tape at best (which was cheaper)
>fairly expensive media until after 2000
>multiple generations of encoding making compatibility a headache once hi-md came out
>middling DACs in all the portable units
>decent quality MP3 burned as an audio track on a CD-R was as good or better than a commercial MD release if you could find one

>thus reducing quality to tape at best
You've never listened to a properly recorded MiniDisc, have you? Tapes could be very good, but none reached the level of MD.
>fairly expensive media until after 2000
Again, prices were comparable to good type II cassettes.
>multiple generations of encoding
What? Just fucking record from the source.
>middling DACs in all the portable units
This you just pulled out of your ass.
>decent quality MP3 burned as an audio track on a CD-R
Discmen capable of MP3 playback started appearing in the early 2000s, and blank CD-Rs at that time were more expensive than MiniDiscs, the price started coming down in 2004-2006. Not to mention MiniDiscs were rewritable.

>I used to buy LPs for literal cents because everyone was moving to CD. Then I dubbed them to MD
You would have to do this since Sony's md catalog was kind of sparce. One of the reasons why it didn't catch on was the fact that you could only buy Celine Dion, or Mariah Carey at the record shops. Meanwhile most people where buying their favorite music prerecorded on tape, vinyl, CDs, and the rest were burning CDRs.
Copying music from vinyl wasn't unique to md btw.
Mini discs were kind of meh for the time, and I completely understand why it didn't catch on.

Let's do this.
>>thus reducing quality to tape at best
>You've never listened to a properly recorded MiniDisc, have you? Tapes could be very good, but none reached the level of MD.
Depended on a huge number of factors on both sides. But my point is that taking audio OUT of the ANALOG MD port wouldn't give you the full quality.
>>fairly expensive media until after 2000
>Again, prices were comparable to good type II cassettes.
More expensive.
>>multiple generations of encoding
>What? Just fucking record from the source.
People pirated music and liked to take it on the go just like today. MP3 of any bitrate recorded as an audio track > MP3 re-encoded to ATRAC every time.
>>middling DACs in all the portable units
>This you just pulled out of your ass.
It's well known that Sony DACs are trash except for the very best ones which only appear in pro gear and maybe a couple high-end units.
>>decent quality MP3 burned as an audio track on a CD-R
>Discmen capable of MP3 playback started appearing in the early 2000s, and blank CD-Rs at that time were more expensive than MiniDiscs, the price started coming down in 2004-2006. Not to mention MiniDiscs were rewritable.
That's not what I said. Recording a decent MP3 onto a CD-R gave you better quality than re-compressing the same MP3 to ATRAC.

>I know this is anecdotal evidence, but I remember people completely skipping (heh) discmen over here.
Maybe you're misremembering decades, because minidisc sales didn't really take off (relatively speaking) until past the year 2000. Prices on unsold minidisc drastically dropped in the European market which caused a momentary boom in sales for players.
Being relatively unpopular in Europe during the 90's actually garnered md some sales in the following decade with the available old stock.

Sony's retarded copy protection.
I'd have totally gone for an MD player if dealing with Sony's proprietary anything wasn't such a fucking hassle.

>You would have to do this since Sony's md catalog was kind of sparce.
That it was. I've never bought a single prerecorded MD in my life. I didn't really like the music scene at the time anyways, I was into 70s prog rock at the time.
>Meanwhile most people where buying their favorite music prerecorded on tape, vinyl, CDs
Nobody bought vinyl in the late 90s to early 2000s. And these people were getting loudness war'd CD remasters for prices that were orders of magnitude higher than what I paid for my non-fucked LPs.
>Copying music from vinyl wasn't unique to md btw
No shit, I was doing it on cassette before I got into MD.
>But my point is that taking audio OUT of the ANALOG MD port wouldn't give you the full quality.
Of course it didn't, because the ATRAC encoding in MD was lossy. Even if you had an S/PDIF out, you'd just be getting the PCM signal that was decoded from the ATRAC stream, which means it wouldn't be source quality either.
That said, this didn't matter unless you were being a dumb fuck and making multi-generation copies, I have never been able to tell an MD recorded without MDLP or any other bullshit apart from the source I made the recording from.
>More expensive.
Ok, if you say so.
>People pirated music and liked to take it on the go just like today
Good for them, but that wasn't my use case. The 64kbps shitty MP3 encodes that were shared at the time were absolute ear rape to me.
>It's well known that Sony DACs are trash
I'd like a source on that, I'm legit interested.
>Recording a decent MP3 onto a CD-R gave you better quality than re-compressing the same MP3 to ATRAC
Again, that was not my use case.
>Maybe you're misremembering decades
No, what I meant was, people stuck with cassette walkmen through the entirety of the 90s, and then around 2000-2001 was when you started seeing the variety I talked about. I switched to MD in 2003, when I bought my MZ-R410.

Sony. Seriously. They are so greedy they fuck up all their own products.

>I switched to MD in 2003, when I bought my MZ-R410.
>2003
Lel. What was the point of minidisc in 2003?

It got adoption in a really good bit of the world that was able to afford high tech consumer entertainment electronic gadgets at the time.

Remember China and most of Asia was still REALLY poor back then, global trade wasn't half as strong as it is now, the SU had collapsed recently, and so on. It's not that long back, but economically speaking it was a pretty different world.

data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=1993&locations=CN-FR-KR-JP&start=1993&view=bar

Attached: Screenshot_2019-04-22 GDP per capita (current US$) Data.png (766x460, 9K)

Pajeet tier idea

These days it makes more sense to get into tapes than it does to get into MDs.

Well, the player was cheap (I think I got it at a discount, €90, plus it came with a 10-pack of MDs), it had practically infinite storage (as opposed to the MP3 players of the time, which were either 64MB flash sticks that couldn't hold two albums at a decent bitrate or hard drive-based players that cost upwards of €200) and being able to just hook it up to my hi-fi and record like I was doing with my tape deck before was quite convenient. I switched to a Sansa Clip + around 2011, it got struck by bad flash around 2013, when I went back to MD for a while, then I switched to my phone in 2015 and I just went to a rockboxed iPod 5.5g with an iFlash and a 200GB uSD card. Side note: HOLY FUCK HOW I MISSED ROCKBOX, IT'S THE BEST FUCKING SHIT EVER.
Both are hipster shit at this point anyway.
It's very late and I have to go to bed. Nite, Jow Forums.

>It got adoption in a really good bit of the world that was able to afford high tech consumer entertainment electronic gadgets at the time.
It wasn't highly adopted until after 2000's, and that was due to old stock being cheap. So earlier posts were correct, and Sony fucked up with pricing as most consumers who could afford the products did not equate the minidisc as more valuable than the alternatives that were available.
>Well, the player was cheap
>Post 2000
Exactly.
This is why minidisc didn't catch on during the 90's, and wasn't that popular after the 2000's.

It can't really make a comeback unless someone starts making the hardware again.
At least the hardware patents should all be expired by now.

This 45 minute Techmoan video is a pretty good overview of MiniDisc. Check it out.
youtube.com/watch?v=kU3BceoMuaA

Bump

need context on this. Also don't forget some companies didn't bother making media players for the format.

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I wish they kept making discs with enclosures, I’m sure it would make the discs last longer and not get scratched.
CD, DVD and Blu-Ray should have all had enclosures you couldn’t remove just like MiniDisc.
I was hoping for Sony to bring it back with the PS5 but if they’re gonna make it backwards compatible I doubt it.

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Didn't it see lots of use as a recording device (in like broadcasting interviews and so forth) because some models had a mic in which allowed for really good mic quality and it showed up before smartphones came around?

>clear plastic case around the disc gets scratched
Now what?

zoomer

Some PSP UMDs cases broke and you could just buy a new empty enclosure and put your game in it.

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Hobbled by DRM (since Sony was in the media business,) and in the USA, by the time prices came down to something more attainable, hHome computers got more commonplace and CDRs became affordable.

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This. The same fuckup Sony made with Betamax.

>has 10 seconds skip buffer

Get a new case, duh.

It's actually brilliant if you think about it.

>the bumpy part of the highway goes on for 10 miles

>Only in Japan and Europe

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