MiniDiscs are causing a sensation among music fans. Although the MD operates on basically the same digital technology as compact discs and can hold about the same amount of music, it has just one-half the diameter of a CD and can be used to make recordings, which CDs cannot.
As with CDs, users can choose where to start the playback on an MD with the touch of a button. One advantage, though, is that with recordings made on MDs, users can create their own markers of where the discs should begin playing.
MDs will not skip or quaver, moreover, and they may soon replace the cassette tape as the recording and playback medium of choice among audiophiles.
Lower Prices Spark Sales
Their popularity got a boost when portable, affordable MD players went on sale from spring 1995. While models that can both record and play back had been retailing for slightly more than 60,000 yen, playback-only types became available for under 40,000 yen, and they have since been the market leaders. More recently, the best-selling component stereo systems have been those that include an MD player/recorder.
Deja Vu in Growth
The MD made its debut in 1992, exactly 10 years after the CD was introduced. Interestingly, its rate of growth has been describing almost exactly the same curve as that of CDs a decade earlier. If the pattern continues, some 3 million players will be sold in its fifth year in 1996.
MDs have some disadvantages, however. While blank cassette tapes sell for 100 yen-200 yen at discount outlets, MiniDiscs cost around 800 yen-900 yen. And while there are tens of thousands of CD recordings to choose from, there are less than a thousand on MDs.
Further price reductions and a wider choice of recordings are required before the MD can make serious inroads into the audio scene.
(The above article, edited by Japan Echo Inc., is based on domestic Japanese news sources. It is offered for reference purposes and does not necessarily represent the policy or views of the Japanese Government.)