Do you know why compact discs hold 74 minutes of music?

[thewayne]

We're talking uncompressed music, not MP3s.

Allegedly, it was because the president of Sony liked a certain Beethoven symphony and it was 74 minutes long.

But apparently there's four different stories there, so pick whichever one you like.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1216

Comments

[silveradept]

That sounds like the storytelling equivalent of a backronym, but it makes for a fun take.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

They're all reasonably viable stories, and it doesn't really matter. I think the thing that I found most interesting was Sony trying to, once again, change the standard to co-opt it for their own all those years ago. When you look at what they did a couple of years back with the DRM root kit on their music CD's, or their proprietary memory stick, etc....

[silveradept]

Sony wants to own the world, what can we say? And they want to own it on their standards.