Sony's Alien Casanova Killed MiniDiscs

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For all the reasons that CDs are greater than cassettes, tapes were arguably better for portable playing. They were self-contained, didn’t get scratched as easily, and made for smaller form factors in music players. Plus, cassettes were a heck of a lot easier to make mix tapes with, and you could re-record to them over and over.

Sony tried to bridge the gap with the MiniDisc. The system itself was rad; The media, an enclosed disc that could be recorded to easily from a computer to a MiniDisc player, combined some of the best aspects of both cassettes and CDs. But as is often the case with proprietary media (and Sony), MiniDiscs never gained much more than niche followings. Musicians and DJs loved them because it made swapping music easy, but for everyone, a mixtape-exclusive system was less appealing.

You could blame it partly on the expense, both of the system itself and the real-world barrier of buying a second media system in a format that no record label consistently used. (I, for example, never bought a MiniDisc, even though I though it was cool, because I was always saving up for new CD players.) But with the benefit of hindsight, I’m going to go ahead and blame it on Sony’s absurd advertising.

Who in the hell thought that a man-whore alien named Plato, who makes abhorrently self-indulgent mixtapes for one-night stands with high-minded titles like “The Audrey Sessions,” would be the perfect spokesman for a format that few people had ever used? I suppose as a college freshman who’s really into 311, being an alien that scores chicks is about as cool as you could ever want to be. But those of us that aren’t jackasses, that’s hardly enticing.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.