CD-R
Write-once optical disc format compatible with standard CD players.
CD-R (Compact disc-recordable) is a digital optical disc storage format that can be written once and read arbitrarily many times. Originally named CD Write-Once (CD-WO), the format was specified in Part II of the Orange Book by Philips and Sony, with the first media produced by Taiyo Yuden in 1988. CD-R discs are readable by most CD readers manufactured prior to the introduction of CD-R, unlike CD-RW discs.
- introduced
- 1988 (first media by Taiyo Yuden)
- developers
- Philips and Sony
- format_specification
- Orange Book, Part II
- storage_capacity
- 74 minutes audio or 650 MB (standard); 80 minutes or 703.125 MiB (common)
- dye_types
- Cyanine (earliest), others
- key_feature
- Write-once, read-many; compatible with audio CD and CD-ROM standards
Lore & Background
The CD-R format originated as CD Write-Once (CD-WO) under the Orange Book standard. Taiyo Yuden produced the first CD-R media in 1988, sold under the brand name That's CD-R. The dye materials developed by Taiyo Yuden made it possible for CD-R discs to be compatible with Audio CD and CD-ROM discs. Early recording systems were large and expensive: the 1990 Meridian CD Publisher, based on a Yamaha PDS audio recorder, cost $35,000 and required external ECC circuitry, a SCSI hard drive, and an MS-DOS control computer. On July 3, 1991, the first recording of a concert directly to CD was made using a Yamaha YPDR 601 at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome, Italy.
Reader's Guide
CD-R's significance lies in enabling affordable, write-once digital storage that is readable on most existing CD players, bridging the gap between pressed CDs and rewritable media. It became a standard for music distribution, data backup, and software delivery. However, by the 2010s, USB flash drives, memory cards, and online storage displaced recordable optical media for everyday use. In June 2024, Sony announced it would phase out production of recordable optical discs, including CD-R, at its plant in Tagajō, Japan, citing falling demand and the shift to streaming. The format's legacy includes its role in democratizing CD recording and its technical innovations like ATIP and dye-based recording. Nonstandard discs (e.g., 80-minute or longer) and proprietary techniques like GigaRec or HD-BURN offered greater capacity but at the cost of compatibility and archival reliability.
Did You Know?
- The first CD-R media were produced by Taiyo Yuden in 1988 under the brand name That's CD-R.
- The first recording of a concert directly to CD was made on July 3, 1991, using a Yamaha YPDR 601 at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome.
- In the United States, 'music' CD-Rs include a mandatory royalty for RIAA members, making them more expensive than 'data' CD-Rs.
- The pregroove on a CD-R contains a wobble that encodes Absolute Time in Pregroove (ATIP) data, including a Disc Application Code.
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