In the 1990s, the advent of the CD burner sparked a revolution. With falling prices for writable media and drives, consumers eagerly embraced the opportunity to duplicate games, create personalized mix CDs, and back up data on optical discs. It was a golden era.

Today, however, the popularity of optical media is on the decline. With waning consumer interest, Sony has announced plans to reduce production of writable optical media. Let’s delve into the reasons behind this shift and consider the future prospects for writable optical discs.

 

The End of an Era? Optical Discs: Sony’s plant in Tagaze, Japan, which has been central to its optical disc manufacturing, is set to see significant changes. The company has announced that it will cut 250 out of 670 jobs at the plant due to the end of writable media production. This move will impact the production of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Rays.

However, it appears that the production of pre-recorded media will not be immediately affected. Reports suggest that Sony will gradually phase out optical disc storage media, including Blu-Rays, over time.

In the meantime, physical media for music, games, and movies will continue to be available. Stores still stock DVDs and Blu-Rays, and you can find CDs from artists like Taylor Swift and Doja Cat if your car still has a CD player. Additionally, major retailers continue to offer game titles for consoles that still use disc drives. Nevertheless, the PC gaming community has largely moved away from optical discs, with many gamers no longer familiar with the format.

 

The End of an Era? Optical Discs: Although Sony is exiting the optical media industry, other manufacturers are still active in the market. The industry has consolidated, with many brands now produced by a few major companies. For example, Taiyo Yuden, known for inventing the recordable CD, left the market in 2015, along with Mitsubishi and Verbatim. All three were acquired by the Taiwanese company CMC Magnetics, which now produces discs branded as Memorex, Imation, HP, TDK, and others. The other major player is Ritek, which also produces CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, DVD+Rs, BD-Rs, and BD-REs.

You might be wondering who still uses optical media today. Consumer use has significantly declined, with many people no longer burning CDs for their cars due to the prevalence of aux ports, Bluetooth, and USB connections. Likewise, data transfer has shifted to flash drives and portable hard drives, which offer more flexibility than write-once optical media.

However, optical media still has a niche role in archival storage. For long-term data preservation, standard CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are not ideal. Instead, M-Discs, available in DVD and Blu-Ray formats, are designed for this purpose. These discs can reportedly store data for up to 1,000 years, thanks to their highly-stable inorganic glassy carbon layer. This layer is much more durable than the organic layers used in typical writable media. Under optimal storage conditions, M-Discs could potentially last up to 10,000 years, though the polycarbonate layer on top is expected to last around 1,000 years.

 

The End of an Era? Optical Discs: For high-capacity cold digital storage, optical media remains a top contender. Although tape can match optical media on cost and data density, it falls short in terms of longevity. While an M-Disc might last 100 to 1,000 years, tapes are typically only good for about 30 years. Optical media is still used by communities like Reddit’s r/DataHoarder and by state government agencies for long-term data preservation.

There’s also optimism about a potential resurgence of optical media. Researchers in Shanghai have recently developed a method for creating optical discs with a storage capacity of around 200 TB, according to The Register. This breakthrough involves a nanoscale three-dimensional structure that achieves unprecedented storage densities. Such high-capacity discs could rival hard drives for certain uses. However, it’s still early days, and challenges like slow write speeds need to be addressed.

While optical media might not be as prominent as it once was, it is far from obsolete. If vinyl records and cassette tapes can make a comeback, who’s to say where the CD market might be in a decade? Human culture often surprises us with its trends and revivals.