Formats of the Beast...

As I'm thinking of including music in my essay piece - particularly Heavy Metal and Iron Maiden - I decided to take a look at the variety of formats music is released in the modern day. I chose to look at Iron Maiden's "Flight 666" release for examples of this.

CD (Compact Disc): CDs have been commercially available since October 1982. In 2010, they remain the standard physical storage medium for audio.

LP (Long Playing) record album: They were first introduced in 1948, and served as a primary release format for recorded music until the compact disc began to significantly displace them by beginning of 1988. As of 2006, a renewed interest in vinyl has occurred and the demand for the medium has been on a steady increase yearly in niche markets. The long-playing record is an analog format.

DVD (Digital Versatile Disc): An optical disc storage media format, and was invented and developed by Sony, and Philips in 1995. It's main uses are video and data storage. DVDs are of the same dimensions as CDs, but store more than six times as much data.

BluRay Disc: An optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the standard DVD format. Its main uses are for storing high-definition video, PlayStation 3 video games and other data. During the format war over high-definition optical discs, Blu-ray competed with the HD DVD format. Toshiba, the main company supporting HD DVD, conceded in February 2008, and the format war ended. Blu-ray Disc was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association and of June 2009, more than 1,500 Blu-ray disc titles are available in Australia and the United Kingdom, with 2,500 in Japan, the United States and Canada.


Personally, I own and collect CDs, DVDs and LPs (mostly due to collecting Maiden), but have not "progressed" from DVD to BluRay as yet due to the price of BluRay players and the discs themselves. There also seems to be no sign of BluRay replacing DVD completely as yet as DVDs are still popular, released and widely available.

When I'm writing about music and what part it has to play in my life in my essay, I will talk about the different formats in my collections and how and when they were introduced in the music industry's history and how bands like Iron Maiden (who have been active for 30 years) have kept up with the new and evolving formats.