After 21 years, Sony has finally decided to stop producing their MiniDisc portable audio players. The last shipment of players will go out next month.
MiniDisc players were first introduced in 1992 and were designed to meet customer needs unlike any other portable music device. The portable shock resistant metal-body player offered sound quality, easy and fast access to music and durability in a small and convenient package.
The minidisc was based on linear PCM digital recording of audio compression, which offered the identical sound quality of a CD. Sales of the MiniDisc players were not what Sony had hoped it would be in the United States, although popular in Japan, possibly because of the high price point of the player. Over the years, with the arrival of MP3 players, especially iPods, sales began to decline.
By the time the MiniDisc reached its tenth anniversary, Sony was still hoping for a turnaround. "We have confidence MD will become a standard" in Europe, and that "signs are promising" of greater uptake in the United States.", said Keiji Kimura in 2002, the then acting president of Sony's Mobile Network Company division. As the iPod became more popular over the years, it put an end to optical media.
The minidisc was a great alternative to having to carry around a clunky CD player. If you were looking for optimum sound quality, as CD began taking off, you more than likely gravitated toward a portable CD player. It was practical at the time, but one of the main issues with CD players besides its bulkiness was the fact that a track would skip every now and then if you happen to bump your player. The shock absorbing quality of the MiniDisc player eliminated this problem.
Portable MiniDisc players offered music lovers a way to put random songs on a recordable minidisc and have a custom playlist of songs. Getting music onto an optical, recordable minidisc cartridge was not the easiest task, but it was worth being able to customize the way we listened to music. The Minidisc helped to bridge the gap between cassette tapes and CDs. In its time, the MiniDisc players served a purpose and reintroduced the functionality of cassette tapes with optimized sound quality of a CD. However, it seems that the MiniDisc player has now outlived its usefulness.
