These mini CDs were relatively successful in Brazil, not because of the phonographic industry, but by a marketing action promoted by Coca-Cola. In the early 2000s, you could exchange Coca-Cola products caps and labels for mini CDs, these often contain songs popular by soap operas and video clips of the time.
I was born in 2002 in the Netherlands but I think I have about 20 of these cd's, they came free with some electrical equipment for pc drivers and also for some promotions and demo games. Forgot to mention, a lot of gamecube games are the small 80mm cd format, they also work in the Wii
One more thing to add is that if you want to play these mini CDs in a slot-loading CD player, such as in a car stereo, you absolutely had to use the ring adapter, since the vast majority of slot-loaders couldn't accept them. I only have 2 mini CDs in my collection, which are Phil Collins' "Two Hearts" with a heart-shaped sleeve, and a promotional disc of Jim Steinman's project, Pandora's Box. Both of them are UK presses.
Many pc drivers and programs were also distributed with mini cd's that didn't required really much space in late 90's and early 2000's. Those were my only contact with that format.
Fun fact about Broken, it had 250,000 copies with a 3" CD but since it got too expensive they decided to make different versions, making a 99 track version for the main CD where everything past the 6th track was 4 seconds of silence except 98 was Physical (You're So) and 99 being Suck
Frost E.P. by Frost. The last studio release by the band of the same name, came out in 2005, the band broke up in 2008 after releasing a 2cd compilation set of their 2 full lengths in 2007. The Frost E.P. was a 3inch, 17 minutes, and only 1,000 were made, which were all print numbered 0001 to 1000. Found copy number 0656 not too long ago.
Not sure if you’ve covered it Jarrett but the 4 different speed records, 78rpm, 45rpm, 33 1/3rpm and 16rpm, used to own a record player with all 4 speeds.
FYI, I just bought a new released disk from the Kpop group Purple Kiss. It came, to my surprise on a mini cd. I found your site looking for a way to play it.
The CD’s pictured at 2:40 are the Oasis singles (from left to right) Sunday Morning Call, Go Let It Out and Who Feels Love. They were released in the UK between February to July 2000. They are actually standard sized CD discs, however the section without data is clear plastic.
I’m gonna have to roll my eyes on this one. All standard CD trays have a notch for playing 3-inch CDs. You can still buy blank ones, too! There are even 3-inch DVDs! The Italian ambient label Amplexus (now called Silentes) often releases 3-inch CDs, one of which is by Robert Rich (which was rereleased as the first track of “A Troubled Resting Place”). Peace.
I barely saw them in the US, but they were all over the place in Japan. CD3 was the official name for them. I used to have a lot of them, and all but one of them were Japanese market releases. They seemed to have a lot more success there because the Japanese music industry is a lot more single-oriented than, say, the American market, which seems to like full album releases more.
as a Mariah Carey fan/collector, I wanted to research these 3 inch CDs because she has released so many, and of course the first video that I see has her mini CD in the video and thumbnail 😭 I also never knew that they were playable in standard CD players, I always knew they existed but I always thought you needed a specific player, which turned me off of buying them
As a Game Collector the first thing I think about is the GameCube. It uses the same Mini Disc's for the games. But I also have some VHS Tapes with music Videos or Live music Concerts with a Mini Disc's in my collection. They sometimes did put a special Mini Disc inside For Singles or Promotional Purpose. As an example : The Genesis Invisible Touche Tour VHS has an Special Limited Edition Mini Disc it came with.
Mini CDs are a lot of fun. I really like to try put full albums them. Punk albums are great for this format, as they are, sometimes, short enough to fit.
5:36 Notice that the back lists the price of the full album in both Compact Disc (CD) and MiniDisc (MD) format. MiniDisc was different from MiniCD, being a bit smaller, always in a protective plastic case, and using magneto-optical tech for recording (while pre-recorded commercial albums were in purely optical form). It's interesting that the prices are the same - one thing that held MD back in the West was that MDs were more expensive than CDs.
Yes i still have one of these, very cool. It is a MiniCD from Sony about the 20th Century Highlights. On the back it says: "Minimum System Requirements: IBM PC Compatible, 486 DX Processor, win 95, 16mb ram recommended, hdd 25 mb available, 256 vga colour monitor, standard cd-rom drive" last part is funny cuz you need at least a cd-rom to use this haha. 😂
@SirEncyTheWray You got that right. For one thing, windows isn't compatible with windows. and doesn't really support VGA mode without task killing the explorer! For shame Microsoft. I think it is funny that you need a DX processor for that. Though I suppose the SX boards were for poor people and sucked pretty bad.
Very much so, and oftentimes for generic hardware like a USB 2.0 PCI upgrade card, or cheap crappy Mp3/Mp4 player would have a mini-CD in the box. I also have a stack of multicolored Mini-CDR disc I picked up in the late 90's supercheap along with a stack of unused Mini DVD-R disc my sister had bought for her Sony Handycam before it died. the 8CM format was also used for kids movies by various Hollywood movie studios to try and push some portable mini DVD players in the early - mid 00's right before the smartphone era, and MANGA used mini DVD for promo to sell cheaper versions of their Anime series in the early 00's but it failed, and even Nintendo used the mini DVD for the GameCube. So the 8CM format was really far more successful than he's giving it credit for in this video.
I have a mini music CD that I bought back in 1994. It still works. I also have a spindle of mini CDRs, which I used to make emulator discs for the Dreamcast and give them out to people back in the early 2000s. They had mini audio CDs in some stores back then for singles. I'm surprised you never saw any. One optical media that I never saw or heard of until recently is Dataplay. Those discs are even smaller than a mini CD. They come in a caddy but the disc seems to be smaller than a quater.
These smaller cheaper 8CM CD disc were still very popular in the 00's, and even into the 2010's with Chinese makers to put software, and hardware drivers on for various computer hardware, or things like cheap Mp3/Mp4 players, and keychain photo viewers. I have several of those disc in my collection, including some blanks mini CD-R disc I picked up cheap in the late 90's. Heck even DVD used the same size format for Anime, and small portable DVD players designed for kids, and held 1.4GB of DATA. Nintendo also used the 8CM format for the Gamecube disc which were DVD read from the outside track to the inside track to get around fees, and make them harder to pirate, then there was Sony who used the mini 8CM DVD-R disc for some of their Handycam models in the early - mid 00's as my sister had one. So really the 8CM format was really more successful than you are giving it credit for here.
I got a mini CD of some of the tracks from Runner3 with my physical Switch copy a few years back. It's weird, but cool. And, of course, I've seen DVDs of this size in the form of Gamecube discs. Oh, and for Song of the Day - "Holding on to You" by Twenty One Pilots
My Mum told me her first CD was a 3" single (I can't remember what of), that I believe came with something (like a magazine maybe). She didn't yet have a player and had to listen to it at a friend's house!
I'm a very tong time record collector with a fairly big collection (about 2000 records and around the same number of CDs). I've been collecting vinyl since the 70s and CDs since the 90s and still buy both. I have just one mini-CD, and it's a UK major label release from 2004. Busted's, "She Wants to Be Me", I was running a mobile disco business at the time and did a lot of work for kids and teens so was staying up to date. It was a normal release, not a promotion, but it's the only one I've seen. It comes in a square jewel case the right size for it (ie small!). I've owned and used a lot of CD and DVD players over the years and none have had a problem playing it, that includes professional DJ decks, home systems, DVD players, and player recorders in laptops and PCs. The smaller indent is, as you say designed to play these discs and there is no danger of it falling out and damaging itself or the equipment. A CD (or DVD) player grips the CD tight from its hole before it starts spinning, so as long as you place it in the drawer correctly there is no danger of damage from them.
These are definitely interesting for me. While I didn't really know about the prevalance of mini-CD singles until I starting frequenting Discogs back in 2020, the form factor of these discs is definitely very familiar to me, having played a lot of GameCube growing up. (that console uses proprietary discs which are essentially mini-DVDs) I currently own two Japanese mini-CD singles. One is the Twin Peaks theme, the other is the PepsiMan jingle.
Mostly singles-The entire UK Beatle single run was released with long boxes.Hey Jude and Get Back were issued in Mono,as well,with Get Back issued in the US in that mix,for the first time.
There's just something fun about Mini CDs. Everyone already knows the regular CD, but this is smaller, and there's just something nice about it. You can even call it cute in a way.
When you pulled up the laserdisc beside the other ones I feel old. When I was growing up my family had a laserdisc player. The laserdisc player still works to this day.
Have quite a few of the 3” CD’s, have never owned an adapter and never had any issues with my front loading CD players. My favourite The KLF what time is love CD3.
Being an old fart , born -65 , I kept on buying singles into the 90’s , which gradually changed to the big cd-singles. However , I got one small one. Suzie Quatro’s ”Baby , you’re a star” from 1989.
I have about 80 3CD's in my collection, most are from artists I listen to, the rest I got for a dollar each at a Japanese street festival I go to every year. Finding tanzaku cases for them that the CD rental stores used in japan are still hard to come by. I love the uniqueness of them! They're actually easier to manage than full sized jewel cases. I got a Philips Pocket Expanium specifically to play them smaller format because I love the format so much.
Lets not forget that the Mini DVD exists too which is the same size and was also used on the GameCube / Panasonic Q where its disks were Mini DVD based
I don't remember music on these mini CDs, but it was normal to find hardware that came with drivers on a mini CD. That was my experience in the UK at least.
I think they would be a fine comeback, but as part of a successor. SACD’s have the same areal density as DVD’s, so, in theory, maybe Blu Ray technology could form a high capacity 3 inch successor to SACD, and the regular size could be used for really big albums
I remember when they first started releasing these mini cd singles. I was working at Sam The Record Man in Toronto then. We never got that many titles on them so they weren't popular really. I still have maybe 10 of them. If you don't have many titles available for sale in a store it's hard to get your product off the ground.
Hi Jarrett, I was a club DJ In the UK, and i would start to get these 3" CD's coming from Japan. They were the CD Equivalent to the Vinyl Records i was already playing. But It would be a Year before I could actually get hold of a CD player to play them on. I had to use the Ring Adapters (As they were known) the only thing was, they fell out too easily. By the time they put the 3" dink In the CD trays, 5" disc's had firmly taken over. I still have and play those disc's today. Even the Rick Astley one You Mentioned. Great Days. PS, I also had loads of UK Pressed ones coming through as Promotional use only. In strange Card sleeve's as of the Phil Collin's one In a Heart shaped one. Still have them all.
I have 2 samplers from label DMP out of Stamford, Ct., from the late 80's. This company, Digital Music Products, specialized in smooth jazz which was popular at that time, and all their music was recorded all digitally. These two sampler discs which are about 3 inches across have terrific sound and fit in the recessed part of your cd player's tray. As far as promotional material goes, this was a good idea.
I actually have one of these! It came free with a switch game I bought, and contains about 16 minutes of the game’s soundtrack. It’s pretty cool imo :)
I’m thinking of buying an RT82 With a Mani preamp and a OM20 stylus. Then i already have good speakers but i dont know which amplifier to get, thinking of a Yamaha R-S202. Any thoughts? Im a beginner but a big music lover
Yes I have seen them very occasionally in the UK for audio. I have seen them for PC drivers once or twice. I believe they were quite popular in Japan for audio singles.
Also I must add, CDs used to sell in long boxes in the US, maybe until 1992-93. Although how wasteful it might appear, the reason to put CDs in those long boxes - exactly at the length of a 12" vinyl cover - was to fit them on LP shelves in record stores. As they realized those long boxes were causing more waste - because they were simply thrown away instead of kids like me posting them on their walls - most record - then, already CD - stores began rearranging their displays for CDs in their typical dimensions. So there wasn't any need for those long boxes. But it was still some time of my life I am glad to have experienced in person. It might sound like an encyclopedic knowledge for newer generations - but I am still happy to say I was there back then.
Born in '85 and I had never heard of these until I had moved to Japan and had gotten into Japanese music. I think they are just so cool. I'm definitely going to have to find that Rick Astley one. lol Got my first one in Akihabara at a place called RECOfan. I had been looking for the mini CD of Chisato Moritaka's The Stress and when I asked the guy if they had it at first he said no. But as I was looking around he came back later and found a really nice copy of it.
As I said in a community post earlier, I have Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Rydeen" and Men At Work's "Down Under" on mini CDs. Still in my Discogs wantlist. I only have mini CD-Rs at the moment.
I'm kind of late to this video, but there is a kpop group Red Velvet who released a version of their album "Feel My Rhythm" in March 2022 that features this type of mini CD.
Never knew about these staying popular in Japan into the early 00s and the unique packaging they had there. The packaging sort of looks like it could be a mini-CD "longbox" :) I read a while ago (forget source, so I don't know how true this is) that the mini CD format was to ease vinyl users into the CD format by having the singles on a smaller disc than full albums since this is how it was in the vinyl world. I remember the CD era from the mid 90s on and I never saw mini-CDs at retail back then. It was rare to even find CD singles at all. I heard that record executives in the 90s were pushing hard to get everyone to buy full albums and made singles at a bare minimum. I did live in a rural area with no specialized CD/record stores, so maybe it was just where I was at. The best we had was The Wall/FYE with one tiny shelf for singles. The singles section was almost as small at the stores MiniDisc section.
i used Mini cd's back in the day.. still have a few now, i still use them put each artist on a mini in MP3 Format. more convenient to carry with my already heavy boombox.
There is even an optical storage disc like that depicted in the movie Cherrie 2000 which is about the size of a quarter and was a British invention but the player drive is a sealed unit and cannot be opened and cannot be repaired so if the player is dead then you just have to dump the unit.
With vinyl and cassettes making a small resurgence I can see these too. Bands still have hit singles. They could easily sell those plus a special song not on the regular CD on a mini. Plus there is the added bonus that they don't require a special device to play them, just a CD player.
I remember getting one of these in a kids meal back in the 00’s, the only other CD oddities I can recall are “CD-Cardz” that Lord of The Rings movies used for merchandisez
The audio systems I grew up with had slots for these CDs, but I never actually saw a music CD of that size though. But they were quite common for distributing PC drivers.
I mostly associate that CD size with device driver discs, as it allowed for a smaller device packaging. There were also mcDonald's Happy meals with music singles at one point, and some games, like the Lego Bionicle ones. Or some stuff added to magazines. But I don't really recall seeing any music in a shop on a mini CD. It probably didn't catch on too much because a small CD isn't that much cheaper in terms of materials, and it requires a separate set of tooling, which can make the whole thing actually more expensive. With records there is a noticeable saving in the cost of material and maybe shipping if you make them smaller, but with CDs it's probably just not worth it. I also have two singles by The Creatures that are made in another interesting way - in the middle there is the metallized part with music on it, and that is about the size of a 3", but the polycarbonate is a regular 12cm CD, which is completely clear. This was only done for aesthetic reasons, of course.
yes , and the netherlands , i actually own a couple , including the one from mariah your showing , the usually came with a adapter ring for if your player didn’t support the smaller size cds AND i have a lot of 8cm recordable ones
I used to burn Mp3 files onto 3-inch CD-R's and listen to them on my portable CD/Mp3/WMA player & on my laptop/ computer. I Still have these mini Mp3 CD-R's. But I'm more into Audio Compact Cassette Tapes than CD's. Especially being a musician, owning Top-of-the-line Professional Recording Equipment and Studio Quality 3-Head Tape Decks, I managed to make all of my tape recordings sound no different than CD's. I play and record my Compact Cassettes on a daily basis. After collecting so many different formats over the years, starting from 1980's, I learned to love all music formats: LP Vinyl Records, Mini Discs, DCC's, DAT's, CD's, Laser Discs, Mini CD's, Audio Compact Cassette Tapes (Being my favorite format), even VHS tapes (C-VHS, S-VHS, D-VHS D-Theater, Beta, DVD's, Blu-ray's, Eight Track Stereo Tapes, Etc... All formats and Machines that play/record them are all fascinating to me. These are all amazing inventions that someone invented.
These were in Australia till 90, I have at least 5 of them, they were packaged in a 3" J card cover, early tray CD players didn't have the 3" indent on the tray calling for the adapter, my 1989 vitage player has the 3" indent
What music are you jamming today? 🤔 🎵
Big Trouble in Little China Soundtrack
Rolling Stones Bye Bye Johnny
Dio - Holy Diver
Man With A Mission - Raise Your Flag
In extremo-Herr mannelig
These mini CDs were relatively successful in Brazil, not because of the phonographic industry, but by a marketing action promoted by Coca-Cola. In the early 2000s, you could exchange Coca-Cola products caps and labels for mini CDs, these often contain songs popular by soap operas and video clips of the time.
cu
There was a similar campaign in the US, too. I never found the discs, but I got two cassettes in the mail! Peace.
Many software drivers came in mini CDs
Exactly. Accompanied by a case.
By the way, I had one of these discs (Coca Cola's) and some others that came with softwares, dictionaries, etc.
I was born in 2002 in the Netherlands but I think I have about 20 of these cd's, they came free with some electrical equipment for pc drivers and also for some promotions and demo games.
Forgot to mention, a lot of gamecube games are the small 80mm cd format, they also work in the Wii
Are you my brother?????
I recall the game of "Schippers van de Kameleon" came inside a Calvé Peanut butter jar lid on a mini CD
@@Genk_ Might be XD, had this profile picture since 2009 when i created my gmail
@@Genk_ lmao
When the laser disc, the CD and the 3" CD were lined up, to me it looked like the Earth and Moon orbiting the sun.
If i'm not totally wrong Nintendo used that size for mini-dvd's for their Game Cube console. Same size but a bit more storage.
Correct 👍 the mini dvd was around 1,5GB per disc
I still have one of these Mini CDs as driver cd from a Bluetooth USB dongle in the storage :D
One more thing to add is that if you want to play these mini CDs in a slot-loading CD player, such as in a car stereo, you absolutely had to use the ring adapter, since the vast majority of slot-loaders couldn't accept them. I only have 2 mini CDs in my collection, which are Phil Collins' "Two Hearts" with a heart-shaped sleeve, and a promotional disc of Jim Steinman's project, Pandora's Box. Both of them are UK presses.
Many pc drivers and programs were also distributed with mini cd's that didn't required really much space in late 90's and early 2000's. Those were my only contact with that format.
TechMoan made a very detailed video about those, i remember when i was still fascinated by how small they are
I recall videos about MiniDiscs and MiniDVD but not these.
I have a few including the original release of NIN's Broken which came with a 3 inch CD containing the 2 'hidden' tracks.
Fun fact about Broken, it had 250,000 copies with a 3" CD but since it got too expensive they decided to make different versions, making a 99 track version for the main CD where everything past the 6th track was 4 seconds of silence except 98 was Physical (You're So) and 99 being Suck
Those Japanese booklets for the mini CD’s are sick. Definitely want to get my hands on one.
Frost E.P. by Frost. The last studio release by the band of the same name, came out in 2005, the band broke up in 2008 after releasing a 2cd compilation set of their 2 full lengths in 2007. The Frost E.P. was a 3inch, 17 minutes, and only 1,000 were made, which were all print numbered 0001 to 1000. Found copy number 0656 not too long ago.
I had some in the late 80's, as well as Cassingles!
I own Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence on Mini CD
Not sure if you’ve covered it Jarrett but the 4 different speed records, 78rpm, 45rpm, 33 1/3rpm and 16rpm, used to own a record player with all 4 speeds.
FYI, I just bought a new released disk from the Kpop group Purple Kiss. It came, to my surprise on a mini cd. I found your site looking for a way to play it.
The CD’s pictured at 2:40 are the Oasis singles (from left to right) Sunday Morning Call, Go Let It Out and Who Feels Love. They were released in the UK between February to July 2000. They are actually standard sized CD discs, however the section without data is clear plastic.
I’m gonna have to roll my eyes on this one. All standard CD trays have a notch for playing 3-inch CDs. You can still buy blank ones, too! There are even 3-inch DVDs! The Italian ambient label Amplexus (now called Silentes) often releases 3-inch CDs, one of which is by Robert Rich (which was rereleased as the first track of “A Troubled Resting Place”). Peace.
So why roll eyes?
@@nanchanger, ’cause it’s like how could you NOT know? Peace.
@@MuzikJunky not everyone knows everything...
He was prolly barely born when they stopped production... ??
I barely saw them in the US, but they were all over the place in Japan. CD3 was the official name for them. I used to have a lot of them, and all but one of them were Japanese market releases.
They seemed to have a lot more success there because the Japanese music industry is a lot more single-oriented than, say, the American market, which seems to like full album releases more.
3:07 that CD by TM Network is for their most popular single "Get Wild" which is the ending credits song in the 1987 anime classic "City Hunter"
I CANNOT IMAGINE anyone actually asking anyone to make a video about these. Lol. Best laugh I've had all week
I've used several of them to record on them. They were available as CD-R in Italy.
as a Mariah Carey fan/collector, I wanted to research these 3 inch CDs because she has released so many, and of course the first video that I see has her mini CD in the video and thumbnail 😭 I also never knew that they were playable in standard CD players, I always knew they existed but I always thought you needed a specific player, which turned me off of buying them
I have several. They were blanks until I burned music on them with my computer. Never used an adapter. Never had a problem.
As a Game Collector the first thing I think about is the GameCube. It uses the same Mini Disc's for the games.
But I also have some VHS Tapes with music Videos or Live music Concerts with a Mini Disc's in my collection.
They sometimes did put a special Mini Disc inside For Singles or Promotional Purpose.
As an example : The Genesis Invisible Touche Tour VHS has an Special Limited Edition Mini Disc it came with.
IIRC the GameCube's discs were actually more akin to mini DVDs.
Mini CDs are a lot of fun. I really like to try put full albums them. Punk albums are great for this format, as they are, sometimes, short enough to fit.
5:36 Notice that the back lists the price of the full album in both Compact Disc (CD) and MiniDisc (MD) format. MiniDisc was different from MiniCD, being a bit smaller, always in a protective plastic case, and using magneto-optical tech for recording (while pre-recorded commercial albums were in purely optical form). It's interesting that the prices are the same - one thing that held MD back in the West was that MDs were more expensive than CDs.
Song of the day:
Once In A Lifetime by Talking Heads
Yes i still have one of these, very cool. It is a MiniCD from Sony about the 20th Century Highlights. On the back it says: "Minimum System Requirements: IBM PC Compatible, 486 DX Processor, win 95, 16mb ram recommended, hdd 25 mb available, 256 vga colour monitor, standard cd-rom drive" last part is funny cuz you need at least a cd-rom to use this haha. 😂
This was 1999 btw.
Lots of modern PCs flunk the system requirements!
@SirEncyTheWray You got that right. For one thing, windows isn't compatible with windows. and doesn't really support VGA mode without task killing the explorer! For shame Microsoft.
I think it is funny that you need a DX processor for that. Though I suppose the SX boards were for poor people and sucked pretty bad.
Love this,didn't know they even existed. Keep this up please.
Learn so much from this channel!
😎❤✌
I used to have The Beatles boxset on this format here in the UK.
Computer software drivers use to come on 3" CD sometimes
Very much so, and oftentimes for generic hardware like a USB 2.0 PCI upgrade card, or cheap crappy Mp3/Mp4 player would have a mini-CD in the box. I also have a stack of multicolored Mini-CDR disc I picked up in the late 90's supercheap along with a stack of unused Mini DVD-R disc my sister had bought for her Sony Handycam before it died. the 8CM format was also used for kids movies by various Hollywood movie studios to try and push some portable mini DVD players in the early - mid 00's right before the smartphone era, and MANGA used mini DVD for promo to sell cheaper versions of their Anime series in the early 00's but it failed, and even Nintendo used the mini DVD for the GameCube. So the 8CM format was really far more successful than he's giving it credit for in this video.
I have a mini music CD that I bought back in 1994. It still works. I also have a spindle of mini CDRs, which I used to make emulator discs for the Dreamcast and give them out to people back in the early 2000s. They had mini audio CDs in some stores back then for singles. I'm surprised you never saw any. One optical media that I never saw or heard of until recently is Dataplay. Those discs are even smaller than a mini CD. They come in a caddy but the disc seems to be smaller than a quater.
These smaller cheaper 8CM CD disc were still very popular in the 00's, and even into the 2010's with Chinese makers to put software, and hardware drivers on for various computer hardware, or things like cheap Mp3/Mp4 players, and keychain photo viewers. I have several of those disc in my collection, including some blanks mini CD-R disc I picked up cheap in the late 90's.
Heck even DVD used the same size format for Anime, and small portable DVD players designed for kids, and held 1.4GB of DATA. Nintendo also used the 8CM format for the Gamecube disc which were DVD read from the outside track to the inside track to get around fees, and make them harder to pirate, then there was Sony who used the mini 8CM DVD-R disc for some of their Handycam models in the early - mid 00's as my sister had one.
So really the 8CM format was really more successful than you are giving it credit for here.
I got a mini CD of some of the tracks from Runner3 with my physical Switch copy a few years back. It's weird, but cool. And, of course, I've seen DVDs of this size in the form of Gamecube discs.
Oh, and for Song of the Day - "Holding on to You" by Twenty One Pilots
Gamecube Mini DVDs
I'm a Cher collector so i have 2 of these both Cher singles. They are so cute
Are these the same size as a Gamecube game?
Yes
My Mum told me her first CD was a 3" single (I can't remember what of), that I believe came with something (like a magazine maybe). She didn't yet have a player and had to listen to it at a friend's house!
I'm a very tong time record collector with a fairly big collection (about 2000 records and around the same number of CDs). I've been collecting vinyl since the 70s and CDs since the 90s and still buy both. I have just one mini-CD, and it's a UK major label release from 2004. Busted's, "She Wants to Be Me", I was running a mobile disco business at the time and did a lot of work for kids and teens so was staying up to date. It was a normal release, not a promotion, but it's the only one I've seen. It comes in a square jewel case the right size for it (ie small!).
I've owned and used a lot of CD and DVD players over the years and none have had a problem playing it, that includes professional DJ decks, home systems, DVD players, and player recorders in laptops and PCs. The smaller indent is, as you say designed to play these discs and there is no danger of it falling out and damaging itself or the equipment. A CD (or DVD) player grips the CD tight from its hole before it starts spinning, so as long as you place it in the drawer correctly there is no danger of damage from them.
These are definitely interesting for me. While I didn't really know about the prevalance of mini-CD singles until I starting frequenting Discogs back in 2020, the form factor of these discs is definitely very familiar to me, having played a lot of GameCube growing up. (that console uses proprietary discs which are essentially mini-DVDs)
I currently own two Japanese mini-CD singles. One is the Twin Peaks theme, the other is the PepsiMan jingle.
Mostly singles-The entire UK Beatle single run was released with long boxes.Hey Jude and Get Back were issued in Mono,as well,with Get Back issued in the US in that mix,for the first time.
Just got 3 of these at a local record store for .94 cents. Probably my fav piece in my collection.
There's just something fun about Mini CDs. Everyone already knows the regular CD, but this is smaller, and there's just something nice about it. You can even call it cute in a way.
When you pulled up the laserdisc beside the other ones I feel old. When I was growing up my family had a laserdisc player. The laserdisc player still works to this day.
Have quite a few of the 3” CD’s, have never owned an adapter and never had any issues with my front loading CD players. My favourite The KLF what time is love CD3.
Being an old fart , born -65 , I kept on buying singles into the 90’s , which gradually changed to the big cd-singles. However , I got one small one. Suzie Quatro’s ”Baby , you’re a star” from 1989.
I have about 80 3CD's in my collection, most are from artists I listen to, the rest I got for a dollar each at a Japanese street festival I go to every year. Finding tanzaku cases for them that the CD rental stores used in japan are still hard to come by. I love the uniqueness of them! They're actually easier to manage than full sized jewel cases. I got a Philips Pocket Expanium specifically to play them smaller format because I love the format so much.
Thanks! I wanted to see you do a video on these for A while. I even suggested them in one of my comments.
Thank youfor this so cool !
Lets not forget that the Mini DVD exists too which is the same size and was also used on the GameCube / Panasonic Q where its disks were Mini DVD based
I don't remember music on these mini CDs, but it was normal to find hardware that came with drivers on a mini CD. That was my experience in the UK at least.
I think they would be a fine comeback, but as part of a successor.
SACD’s have the same areal density as DVD’s, so, in theory, maybe Blu Ray technology could form a high capacity 3 inch successor to SACD, and the regular size could be used for really big albums
I have 10 of those mini cd,s , but my favorite is the minidisc , smaller than mini cd and recordable , greetings from the Netgerlands !!
Hocus Pocus - Focus
If you haven’t heard this, it’s awesome.
I remember when they first started releasing these mini cd singles. I was working at Sam The Record Man in Toronto then. We never got that many titles on them so they weren't popular really. I still have maybe 10 of them. If you don't have many titles available for sale in a store it's hard to get your product off the ground.
K-pop group Red Velvet just released their newest album The ReVe Festival Finale 2022 album with a mini CD it’s so cute I love it
I just lucked up on Prince- Hit and Run phase 2 CD at a used store. AWESOME find.
4:11 Needed for slot in players.
Portables have also spindle
Hi Jarrett, I was a club DJ In the UK, and i would start to get these 3" CD's coming from Japan. They were the CD Equivalent to the Vinyl Records i was already playing. But It would be a Year before I could actually get hold of a CD player to play them on. I had to use the Ring Adapters (As they were known) the only thing was, they fell out too easily. By the time they put the 3" dink In the CD trays, 5" disc's had firmly taken over. I still have and play those disc's today. Even the Rick Astley one You Mentioned. Great Days.
PS, I also had loads of UK Pressed ones coming through as Promotional use only. In strange Card sleeve's as of the Phil Collin's one In a Heart shaped one. Still have them all.
I have a 3” cd Madonna like a prayer single, is so small and so cute I will never get rid of it !
I have 2 samplers from label DMP out of Stamford, Ct., from the late 80's. This company, Digital Music Products, specialized in smooth jazz which was popular at that time, and all their music was recorded all digitally. These two sampler discs which are about 3 inches across have terrific sound and fit in the recessed part of your cd player's tray. As far as promotional material goes, this was a good idea.
I actually have one of these! It came free with a switch game I bought, and contains about 16 minutes of the game’s soundtrack. It’s pretty cool imo :)
I’m thinking of buying an RT82 With a Mani preamp and a OM20 stylus. Then i already have good speakers but i dont know which amplifier to get, thinking of a Yamaha R-S202. Any thoughts? Im a beginner but a big music lover
Hey Vinyl Eyezz! Love your channel! Is there any plans of making a video on how to burn a CD? Love from England! 🇬🇧
I remember them and still have them. Here in The Netherlands/Europe they were everywhere.
They aren't as rare as one might think, especially in Europe they were widespread and there was even a DVD version of them.
I literally bought a new PC component last week and it came with a Mini CD storing the driver.
yep. camcorders had mini dvd in it.
the pocket players looked even like minidisc players back then lol
Yes I have seen them very occasionally in the UK for audio. I have seen them for PC drivers once or twice. I believe they were quite popular in Japan for audio singles.
One of the mini CDs I have in my collection is Ray Charles performing America The Beautiful. Which is also a suggestion for song of the day.
Also I must add, CDs used to sell in long boxes in the US, maybe until 1992-93. Although how wasteful it might appear, the reason to put CDs in those long boxes - exactly at the length of a 12" vinyl cover - was to fit them on LP shelves in record stores. As they realized those long boxes were causing more waste - because they were simply thrown away instead of kids like me posting them on their walls - most record - then, already CD - stores began rearranging their displays for CDs in their typical dimensions. So there wasn't any need for those long boxes. But it was still some time of my life I am glad to have experienced in person. It might sound like an encyclopedic knowledge for newer generations - but I am still happy to say I was there back then.
Born in '85 and I had never heard of these until I had moved to Japan and had gotten into Japanese music. I think they are just so cool. I'm definitely going to have to find that Rick Astley one. lol
Got my first one in Akihabara at a place called RECOfan. I had been looking for the mini CD of Chisato Moritaka's The Stress and when I asked the guy if they had it at first he said no. But as I was looking around he came back later and found a really nice copy of it.
That video was very interesting. Thank you.😊
Rhino released a series of these in the late 80's by artists from the 50's and 60's. They had 3-4 songs on them. I still have one from The Fleetwoods.
I have a lot of 3" cd singles from the late 80s and early 90s
Sometimes, in the days when computer accessories came with driver software, it was supplied on a mini CD.
I have one of those from Japan, has 3 songs, it’s Mariko Ide’s first/debute single Crawl from Avex.
The early Sonny PSP had this mini CD for its games!!
My whole childhood was with these mini CD
Lol I have one of these for Paul McCartney's 'Party Party'
As I said in a community post earlier, I have Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Rydeen" and Men At Work's "Down Under" on mini CDs. Still in my Discogs wantlist.
I only have mini CD-Rs at the moment.
You should do a mini disc episode as well. Interesting media format in the early 2000’s.
I'm kind of late to this video, but there is a kpop group Red Velvet who released a version of their album "Feel My Rhythm" in March 2022 that features this type of mini CD.
Never knew about these staying popular in Japan into the early 00s and the unique packaging they had there. The packaging sort of looks like it could be a mini-CD "longbox" :) I read a while ago (forget source, so I don't know how true this is) that the mini CD format was to ease vinyl users into the CD format by having the singles on a smaller disc than full albums since this is how it was in the vinyl world. I remember the CD era from the mid 90s on and I never saw mini-CDs at retail back then. It was rare to even find CD singles at all. I heard that record executives in the 90s were pushing hard to get everyone to buy full albums and made singles at a bare minimum. I did live in a rural area with no specialized CD/record stores, so maybe it was just where I was at. The best we had was The Wall/FYE with one tiny shelf for singles. The singles section was almost as small at the stores MiniDisc section.
I was able to collect around 30 pieces of these Japanese 3" cds from the late 90s to early 2000s... there are even remixes!
yes i remember seeing those being sold, basically for only 2 or 3 songs
i used Mini cd's back in the day.. still have a few now, i still use them put each artist on a mini in MP3 Format. more convenient to carry with my already heavy boombox.
There is even an optical storage disc like that depicted in the movie Cherrie 2000 which is about the size of a quarter and was a British invention but the player drive is a sealed unit and cannot be opened and cannot be repaired so if the player is dead then you just have to dump the unit.
With vinyl and cassettes making a small resurgence I can see these too. Bands still have hit singles. They could easily sell those plus a special song not on the regular CD on a mini. Plus there is the added bonus that they don't require a special device to play them, just a CD player.
I just got some eurobeat CDs in this style, blew my mind!
I remember my portable dvd player having a mini cd. It had so many retro games
I remember getting one of these in a kids meal back in the 00’s, the only other CD oddities I can recall are “CD-Cardz” that Lord of The Rings movies used for merchandisez
The audio systems I grew up with had slots for these CDs, but I never actually saw a music CD of that size though.
But they were quite common for distributing PC drivers.
I'd forgotten about those, even though I only have one audio version, I do remember software being released on them.
I mostly associate that CD size with device driver discs, as it allowed for a smaller device packaging. There were also mcDonald's Happy meals with music singles at one point, and some games, like the Lego Bionicle ones. Or some stuff added to magazines. But I don't really recall seeing any music in a shop on a mini CD. It probably didn't catch on too much because a small CD isn't that much cheaper in terms of materials, and it requires a separate set of tooling, which can make the whole thing actually more expensive. With records there is a noticeable saving in the cost of material and maybe shipping if you make them smaller, but with CDs it's probably just not worth it. I also have two singles by The Creatures that are made in another interesting way - in the middle there is the metallized part with music on it, and that is about the size of a 3", but the polycarbonate is a regular 12cm CD, which is completely clear. This was only done for aesthetic reasons, of course.
yes , and the netherlands , i actually own a couple , including the one from mariah your showing , the usually came with a adapter ring for if your player didn’t support the smaller size cds AND i have a lot of 8cm recordable ones
I used to burn Mp3 files onto 3-inch CD-R's and listen to them on my portable CD/Mp3/WMA player & on my laptop/ computer. I Still have these mini Mp3 CD-R's. But I'm more into Audio Compact Cassette Tapes than CD's. Especially being a musician, owning Top-of-the-line Professional Recording Equipment and Studio Quality 3-Head Tape Decks, I managed to make all of my tape recordings sound no different than CD's. I play and record my Compact Cassettes on a daily basis. After collecting so many different formats over the years, starting from 1980's, I learned to love all music formats: LP Vinyl Records, Mini Discs, DCC's, DAT's, CD's, Laser Discs, Mini CD's, Audio Compact Cassette Tapes (Being my favorite format), even VHS tapes (C-VHS, S-VHS, D-VHS D-Theater, Beta, DVD's, Blu-ray's, Eight Track Stereo Tapes, Etc... All formats and Machines that play/record them are all fascinating to me. These are all amazing inventions that someone invented.
You could have also mentioned the shaped mini-CDs (besides the "regular" business-card CDs)
I've always found these things fascinating. I had one, it was for installing software that came with a device.
One of my fav ska centric labels, Jump Up Records, released a mini CD or two over the past few years. I snagged them as a novelty as much as anything.
Love your videos! What microphone do you use when recording your videos?
These were in Australia till 90, I have at least 5 of them, they were packaged in a 3" J card cover, early tray CD players didn't have the 3" indent on the tray calling for the adapter, my 1989 vitage player has the 3" indent
Aahh, this brings back memories of Gamecube and Bionicle promo CDs