1983 in Hi-Fi

Following its Japan-only debut in October 1982, the Compact Disc finally reached the US and European markets in March 1983, when Philips released its CD100 player internationally. Early CD players were expensive — often close to $1,000 — so adoption was still slow among everyday buyers, but 1983 is the year the format stopped being a Japan-only curiosity and became something Western hi-fi shoppers could actually walk into a store and buy.

1983 also marks a real changing of the guard in analog formats: this is the year cassette tape sales surpassed vinyl LP sales in the US for the first time, a shift driven heavily by the portability the Walkman had popularized a few years earlier. Vinyl wasn't disappearing yet, but the format that would eventually challenge it — first cassette, and later the CD itself — was now firmly established as the more popular way most people bought recorded music.