April 28, 2009
The First CD Packages
Wilson Rothman published a neat article at Gizmodo about the ever shrinking packaging for music. I had almost forgotten the CD long box, the original packaging for compact discs. As he describes,
"They actually started shipping in long rectangular boxes, so they'd take up exactly 50% of the rack space of a vinyl album. I think this was on purpose, so record stores didn't have to retool their shelving. The upside was lots of surface area for cover art, and the early days of the CD were like a return of album art. These long skinny boxes had huge busts of Jim Morrison, huge prints of the famed Zeppelin explosion that launched a band into stardom. The boxes were also wrapped in easy-to-tear plastic, so getting into your CD, though it took a few steps, was pretty easy."
Those were the days. Here's the link
