1989 in Hi-Fi

Having passed vinyl the year before, CDs cleared their last major hurdle in 1989: this is the year CD sales outsold prerecorded cassette tapes for the first time, making the Compact Disc the single most popular recorded music format in the US. It had taken seven years since the format's 1982 Japanese debut to get there, but by the end of the '80s the digital disc had fully displaced both of the formats that came before it.

This shift is visible in how hi-fi equipment was marketed by this point — CD players had moved from a premium add-on to the default centerpiece of a modern system, while cassette decks were increasingly framed as a recording and portability tool rather than the primary way to enjoy music at home.