Pyrrho
Super Member
There are a lot of reasons MiniDisc never was popular. The article at Wikipedia goes through many of them:
Sony's MiniDisc was one of two rival digital systems, both introduced in 1992, that were targeted as replacements for the Philips Compact Cassette analog audio tape system: the other was Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), created by Philips and Matsushita. Sony had originally intended Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to be the dominant home digital audio recording format, replacing the analog cassette. Due to technical delays, DAT was not launched until 1989, and by then the U.S. dollar had fallen so far against the yen that the introductory DAT machine Sony had intended to market for about $400 in the late 1980s now had to retail for $800 or even $1000 to break even, putting it out of reach of most users.
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The initial low uptake of MiniDisc was attributed to the small number of pre-recorded albums available on MD as relatively few record labels embraced the format. The initial high cost of equipment and blank media was also a factor. Mains-powered hi-fi MiniDisc player/recorders never got into the lower price ranges, and most consumers had to connect a portable machine to the hi-fi in order to record. This inconvenience contrasted with the earlier common use of cassette decks as a standard part of an ordinary hi-fi set-up.
MiniDisc technology was faced with new competition from the recordable compact disc (CD-R) when it became more affordable to consumers beginning around 1996. Initially, Sony believed that it would take around a decade for CD-R prices to become affordable – the cost of a typical blank CD-R disc was around $12 in 1994 – but CD-R prices fell much more rapidly than envisioned, to the point where CD-R blanks sank below $1 per disc by the late 1990s, compared to at least $2 for the cheapest 80-minute MiniDisc blanks.
The biggest competition for MiniDisc came from the emergence of MP3 players. With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of file-based systems.
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The initial low uptake of MiniDisc was attributed to the small number of pre-recorded albums available on MD as relatively few record labels embraced the format. The initial high cost of equipment and blank media was also a factor. Mains-powered hi-fi MiniDisc player/recorders never got into the lower price ranges, and most consumers had to connect a portable machine to the hi-fi in order to record. This inconvenience contrasted with the earlier common use of cassette decks as a standard part of an ordinary hi-fi set-up.
MiniDisc technology was faced with new competition from the recordable compact disc (CD-R) when it became more affordable to consumers beginning around 1996. Initially, Sony believed that it would take around a decade for CD-R prices to become affordable – the cost of a typical blank CD-R disc was around $12 in 1994 – but CD-R prices fell much more rapidly than envisioned, to the point where CD-R blanks sank below $1 per disc by the late 1990s, compared to at least $2 for the cheapest 80-minute MiniDisc blanks.
The biggest competition for MiniDisc came from the emergence of MP3 players. With the Diamond Rio player in 1998 and the Apple iPod, the mass market began to eschew physical media in favor of file-based systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc
Some people also did not want a lossy format and then there was the copy protection that they built into the system (you can read about those things at the link above; I did not want to quote the whole article).
I remember at the time thinking that the format was mildly interesting, but I did not ever buy one. I had a CD player, and I did not care about having a smaller thing, so the only issue was being able to record. I still had my old cassette deck from many years earlier, so I could record audio if I really wanted to, but I mostly was listening to prerecorded music anyway, so that was not necessary for me. (And, like practically all CD players, I could program it to only play some of the tracks, or just push a button to skip a track on the spur of the moment, if I did not want to listen to all of the tracks.) I suspect that a lot of people felt about it as I did, that the cost/benefit ratio just did not make me want yet another format. I did not really need the record capability, and there just was no other reason to get it.
[Given my preferences, I would have wanted to get a DAT rather than either the MiniDisc or DCC, if I needed to record something digitally (instead of just settling for a cassette recording). I don't like lossy formats, if I can avoid them. But I did not need such a thing, so I did not buy one of those either.]
Frankly, I am glad I never bought one. If I want to make something that other people can hear, I can make a CDR, which more people will be able to play than if I gave them a MiniDisc. And the fidelity is better (not being lossy). Of course, now, many people don't bother with a physical format at all, and just deal with streaming and files.
So, I think it failed because it cost too much for whatever benefit it might have given people, according to the standards of most people. Including most audiophiles.
