42 years ago today, on March 2, 1983 (January 18, 1983 in the lunar calendar), digital music records were launched. Philips and Sony positioned CDs as the music industry standard. As early as 1979, Philips and Sony established a joint working group of engineers to design new digital audio records, and made many decisions the following year, such as record size. The initial target storage capacity is to play an hour of audio content using a CD with a diameter of 11.5 centimeters. Later, the two sides expanded the storage capacity to 74 minutes to accommodate a complete copy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. In June 1980, Philips and Sony jointly launched a new standard "Red Book", with technical specifications applicable to all CD and CD memory standards. Philips 'optics team has made great contributions to CD technology. PietKramer, one of its members, commented on the cooperation results between Philips and Sony, said: "When Philips and Sony began to cooperate to develop CDs, our original goal was to win a global market for CDs., and work together to reach a new standard. For Philips, this open innovation is a new attempt and has achieved a return on investment. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we couldn't imagine that one day in the future, the computer and entertainment industries would also choose digital optical discs to store ever-expanding computer programs and movies." In 1985, Philips collaborated with the DireStraits band to promote CDs. Digital music records were launched on March 2, 1983. When CD sales began to rise in the music industry, there were more than 1000 CDs with different tracks on the market. In 1985, DireStraits, one of the world's famous bands, also began recording CD records. As the first fully digital record for the market, the little-known album "Brothersin Arms" immediately became the best-selling record of the time and ranked third in sales over a decade. The joint cooperation between Philips and DireStraits not only provides consumers with CD records with excellent sound quality, making "Brothersin Arms" the first new record with more than a million sales. This success also makes CD a new choice for musical quality. Lucas Covers, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Philips Consumer Electronics, said: "The excellent sound quality of CDs confirms its uniqueness to consumers who want to enjoy the perfect music. Over the past 25 years, the huge success of CDs has provided consumers with new ways to enjoy perfect music all the time. CD played a core leadership role in the transition from analog music to digital music, not only realizing the application of DVD in the music field, but also further laying the foundation for more innovative technologies, such as current Blu-ray technology. "In the past 25 years, global CD sales have exceeded 200 billion CDs, which are the ancestors of today's many optical disc families, from optical disk memory, recordable discs, multi-recorded discs to DVDs, recordable DVDs, multi-recorded DVDs, and Blu-ray technology. Since the first CD was born 25 years ago at the Philips factory near Hanover, Germany, global CD sales have exceeded 200 billion. Even if a single CD is only 1.2 mm thick, stacking all the CDs together can circle the earth six times. Due to their superior digital quality, portability and damage resistance, CDs and DVDs have not only become popular music and video media, but also become popular gifts. Milestones for the birth of CD: On August 17, 1982, the world's first CD was born at the Philips factory near Hanover, Germany. In the past 25 years, more than 200 billion CDs have been sold jointly developed by Philips and Sony, leading to the transformation of the music industry from an analog model to a digital model, and at the same time spawned a large number of innovative digital technologies, including CD memory and DVDs August 20, 2007, Beijing, China-25 years ago, on August 17, 1982, Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE:PHG, AEX:PHI) The world's first CD was made at the Philips factory in Langenhagen, near Hanover, Germany. The invention of CD ushered in a technological change in the music industry. Its superior sound quality and damage resistance marked the beginning of the transformation from analog mode to digital music technology. CD has become a catalyst for further innovation in digital entertainment products, laying the foundation for the invention of DVD and the currently launched Blu-ray media. CD plays an important role in digital music innovation, allowing consumers to feel the tremendous progress in entertainment and life technology anytime and anywhere. The Philips German factory, which produced the first CD, belonged to Polarkin Records, a subsidiary of Philips at the time. The first CD produced by the factory was the album "The Visitors" by the singing group ABBA. In November 1982, a total of about 150 tracks were produced into the first CDs and launched on the market, mainly classical music. The first CDs and CD players, including the Philips 'CD100 model, were launched in Japan in November and entered the U.S. and European markets in March 1983.