Add my name to the list of Digipak haters.

I really think this trend has less to do with being environmentally friendly than it does cutting costs and giving the consumer less. They're basically selling you CDs in a little paper folder.

Digipaks are fragile and can't be replaced the way a broken jewel case can. They're fragile and easily damaged, and offer less protection for the CD. So you're more likely to lose or damage your CD. And, because of this, they also probably have less value on the secondary/used market as well.

It's really quite laughable to think that selling CDs in later paper things instead of plastic cases is going to change ANYTHING in the big picture. With all of the plastic shit that can be found everywhere, I'm sure that the music industry uses up only a tiny fraction of a percent of all the plastic that's used in our society.

Actually, I think the first major release to push an environment-friendly packaging was U2's Achtung Baby in '90 or '91.

Back then, there was a minor hubbub over longboxes filling up our landfills. (Remember when CDs came in those foot long boxes?)

One solution was to package CDs in these cases that had dimensions similar to a longbox, which, once opened, folded down into a jewel-box sized case. Acthung Baby was, I believe, one the first (or only?) releases to come in this.

I still have my copy. Ironically, it's actually quite heavy and probably uses about as much cardboard as three longboxes.

Anymore, I don't really care. I rip the disc to the computer, pack up the case, and off I go.

People seemed to do just fine with vinyl packaging, which was essentially a cardboard sleeve. I can see the concern with scratching the disc, though.

I have a original 1991 Achtung Baby in a jewel case. Guess that album came both ways back then. I have two like that, though with the longbox that gets folded into a digipak (and two plastic sticks were thrown away as well)-- The Soul Cages by Sting and Luck of the Draw by Bonnie Raitt. I hated those cases then and I still do. If nothing else though at least they had spindles. I rented a couple of Jack Johnson albums from the library and they were scratched totally to hell from getting slid in and out of the cardboard sleeve.

My main point about all this is if record companies really want us to buy physical copies of albums, they should at least make the packaging durable enough to last. That press release from Universal basically acknowledged that they expect CD owners to rip their CD to the computer and never look at the CD again. If that's their point, why should we even buy a CD at all?

I also have Sting's "The Soul Cages" in that format. I remember when I got it, I wasn't sure how to fold it to put it together right. If I ever feel like listening to it, I reach for the "Gold Tour Souvenir Edition" that's in a jewel case instead.

I hate all the non-jewel case packages too. I hate digipaks because the corners get dinged up and because the center spindle can break. I hate the all-cardboard packages because they tend to scratch the CDs and because they are liable to tearing (as well as the aforementioned corner-dinging).

As for preventing scratching, I've devised the following method. I take anti-static (polyethelene) sleeves -- the third item pictured here: http://www.sleevetown.com/plastic-cd-sleeves.shtml -- trim them down a little, and then slip them inside the cardboard packaging. In rare cases, when the package is so badly designed that tearing seems inevitable, I actually put the polyethelene sleeve right *beside* -- rather than inside -- the cardboard package on my CD tower.

Anal, I know, but it's tended to work!

You know, I'd forgotten all about U2's Achtung Baby and Sting's Soul Cages - which would have put the date at '91. However, I found it out goes even further back than that. I was telling a friend about this topic, and he told me he had a copy of Robert Palmer's Riptide in a Digipack - so that puts the date at around 1985. I stand corrected on both counts.

Yeah, it did. The version in the jewel case was released without a long box, and a number of stores and chains refused to carry it over theft concerns.

I miss the big cardboard boxes cd's used to come in. Cut open the bottom and you had free cd's

nice

Just an update : I found out too late, but the aformentioned "Viva La Vida" is available in a jewel case at Costco (encased in landfill-friendly long box -- NICE!)

The only time I mind the sleeve packaging is when the sleeves open up in the middle rather than the outside. Cat Power's "You Are Free" and Godspeed! You Black Emperor's "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven" are two of these that spring to mind. Because they slide out at the bend in the middle, the sleeve on the other side of the bend gets in the way and you have to bend the casing backwards to get at the CD, and then that bend usually makes the sleeve tighter and harder for you to remove the CD.

It's especially worse when there's no notch cut out to get easy access to the CD, like this:

As if just to mock me, Amazon has now made these things (actually a new line of Columbia catalog titles in "eco-friendly slider-box CD packaging") a marketing tool.
"Feeling Blue? Go Green!"




Check out the video of the crappy new product!!!
They actually have the audacity to use "Don't Stop Believing" in the ad. What would Tony Soprano think?

Well, I'm not calling you (or your friend) a liar, but I was an avid record collector from 1983-1993, and I don't remember Digipaks coming on the scene until after I graduated high school (1989). It's entirely possible that Palmer's record company did some kind of "trial thing" with Riptide, but I'm pretty sure they didn't become "standard" until at least 1990.

For the record, the first Digipak I owned was 10,000 Maniacs "Candy Everybody Wants" CD single, which came out in 1992. I hardly ever listen to "Candy", but I really love the single for their covers of Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday", The Horseflies' "Sally Ann" and R.E.M.'s "(Don't Got Back To) Rockville". That's a good single, and worth tracking down.

Oh, and until 2003 (when my parents moved out of their house and I had to throw a bunch of junk away that I'd stored there) I used to have a HUGE collection of longboxes from the 80s. Heh - I wonder if anyone would have paid $$$ on eBay for an empty Dream of the Blue Turtles long box from 1985?

There's exactly ONE that's worth anything. PLEASE don't tell me you tossed the long box from Sgt Pepper! I'm still kicking myself for tossing mine out just a few months after it's 1987 release. Who knew?

Oh, and if you want to feel old, consider this : That CD is now older than the original LP was when the CD came out. Yikes!

I figured those long boxes had to be good for something, so I cut them open and lined my college dorm room with them like a border up by the ceiling. I still have them and take them out and look at them sometime when I'm feeling nostalgic.

I can remember when records were still sold (a very early memory of mine) but I do not remember CD longboxes at all.

What was the last (or one of the last) CD's to come in a longbox? '93-94 is when they finally went away?

The last CD? Costco STILL sells CDs in longboxes sometimes.

Can't say they really bother me. Mine are all still in good shape.

I know we can't post auction links, but I just saw an empty "Sgt. Pepper" longbox for $10 (Buy It Now price) on eBay.

Wasn't Dee-Lite one of the first that didn't want to do a longbox? I remember hearing about it on MTV News about 15 years ago or so.

I still have my Sgt.Pepper long box (the only long box I still have) - it's at the bottom of some drawer.

I don't think I ever owned Sgt. Pepper on CD. I know I had it on British vinyl, but I think my "Beatles phase" was done by the time it was released on CD (just like how The Beatles took forever to come out on iTunes, so too did it take them forever to release their stuff on CD - remember that?)

One of the walls of my room was covered in corkboard, and just like Tscott, I'd often use them for decoration. I'd stick straight pins through them and put them on the wall, which added a nice "3-D effect".

And Sam's Club also sells CDs in longboxes to this day. However IIRC they're just generic "record company" longboxes (they're usually black or blue and say "Capitol Records" on them, for example). They usually lack the fancy graphics like Tscott's pictures.

Since we're on this trip down memory lane... does anyone remember "CD stores" in the 80s?

In Atlanta, there was a small local chain called "Atlanta CD" that only sold, well, CDs. They had a giant selection compared to most record stores at the time, and huge numbers of imports (which was important, since a lot of stuff wasn't available on domestic CD at the time). I still have a lot of the Cocteau Twins and Japan\David Sylvian CDs I bought there - which lack UPC codes, since the UK was a few years behind the US in slapping codes on everything.

Sadly, the chain folded as "normal" record stores started getting rid of LPs and replacing them with CDs... which sucked, 'cos most record stores didn't carry imports (especially when there was already a domestic release*). I was collecting the import R.E.M. CDs from the UK (which included a lot of bonus tracks. I never got the UK version of Murmur...

* - Pointless, but interesting factoid: the regular version of Madonna's "Into The Groove" (the one you remember from MTV and radio back in 1985) was not available on CD in the US until 2002.

It was always on the British\European version of the Like A Virgin (album) CD, but that could not be imported for a long period of time. That's because the US record companies complained to the FTC about losing money to imports, so the importation for resale of CDs for which there was a "domestic version" was banned for several years (another reason places like Atlanta CD went under). There were "remixes" of "Into The Groove" available on You Can Dance (and a shorter version of that remix on The Immaculate Collection), but the "regular" version didn't appear until the "remastered" version of Like A Virgin came out in 2002.

Those long boxes were great, when you opened them up they were the size of a record album and made for cheap wall decorations.

Anyway, if you really want to be environmentally conscience, just don't buy CDs and download your music.

At Sam's Club too. No longbox at my location though.