I've just got my first CD player. A Sony that lasted about three years. I christen it with The Legendary Roy Orbison:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/legendary-orbison-greatest-hits-audio/dp/B000ZRQ...

- recently departed, you see - and Elvis: The Collection, Volume 1:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collection-Vol-1-Elvis-Presley/dp/B000025WBU/ref...

Cutting edge sounds of 1988.

the first cd I bought, but I bet it was some awful dance/jungle/techno thing because it was the mid-90s! I probably can't remember because the pain of selling loads of my vinyl(because it was on the way out of course!) is still there! When I was doing a clean out a few years later, I got rid of a load of tapes, most of which were jazz ones that I soon realised you can't get anymore!! Now, I don't throw anything out!!

It was 1985, I had just acquired a Denon CD player. I headed off to a local record shop, where there may have been around 50 or 60 CD's to choose from. I remember being appalled at how expensive they were, but chose two CDs. The first was Stevie Wonder's "In Square Circle" which was not long released. When I got it home it sounded terrible - all clattering drums and sterile keyboards. It was a horrible moment as I thought of how much money I had wasted on the Cd and the player.

The second was Van Morrison's "Inarticulate Speech of the Heart" which I already had on vinyl - this was bought specifically to allow a comparison test between the two formats. It sounded fantastic - real musicians and vocals floating on banks of warm synths. I spent the next 6 months playing it to my friends while flipping back and forward between the CD and LP, and saving up for my next CD. I'm not sure that I ever played 'In Square Circle' again ... but it's still on the shelf.

Just starting first year in college and got my tax back from a summer's work in London, bought the cd player, Exile On Main St., Sticky Fingers, Blonde On Blonde and Achtung Baby by the '2 as it was just out.

Fair play to 18 year old Pat.

Also 1988. My first CD was the 10,000 Maniacs single What's The Matter Here?

The first album was Big Black's Rich Man's Eight Track Tape. I still have both CDs, but have no idea what kind of CD player it was.

The first CD was Tom Wait's Rain Dogs, still one of my favourite albums. I already knew that I was buying a established classic of course, so I can' demand any kudos for my choice.

Late 1989, fed up with the massive artificial inflation of the price of vinyl to induce us to buy CD's I succumb buy a CD player. My first 3 discs are The Stone Roses; Danny Wilson's Meet Danny Wilson and John Martyn's Solid Air. Solid Air being something I already had on vinyl.
I know I sold Danny Wilson within a couple of years but I'm damned if I know where The Stone Roses CD has gone.

i obtained my first player in 1985 and headed off to my local Our Price in Aldershot.
Like StevenC said in an earlier comment the choice then was extremely limited and the price £12.50 each, which was pretty steep then.
I pushed the boat out and bought two -Grace Jones Island Life & Yes 90125.
Everybody who then visited us was subjected to window shattering levels of "Leave it"
Alas i soon tired of this album and it was ditched as soon as i had my first CD cull.

I'm certain of the year as I'd just come back from my first overseas trip and I had a lot of spare cash so I got a new stereo and it just happened to have a cd player attached.

I'd had it for about a month when I went into a second hand record shop and saw the smallish cd section and thought "Oh I've got a cd player, I should get one." So I had a look and picked out The Doors debut. I'm not proud, its just what I chose.

I remember when cds were first introduced a local radio station were constantly promoting the benefits of cds, "You can use them as a frisbee all day and they will still play perfectly." Yeah right.

Anyway they had a contest where if you could pick the difference between old fashioned records and the new miracle product you could ring up and win a prize.

They must have selected the most wasted records in their library. You'd be listening to pristine sound then all of a sudden something more crackly than anything I'd ever heard broadcast before came through the speakers. The tactic was so blatant it actually turned me off cds.

I'd just purchased a Rotel CD player and amp with Monitor Audio speakers so it was off down to WH Smiths in Guildford to get "Hold your fire" by Rush, "90125" by Yes, "Eye in the sky" by the Alan Parsons Project and, hmmmm, "Diamond Life" by Sade!

Where did that last one come from in my prog addled state?

Still love all those albums although my CD player clearly got tired of playing Leave It a brain numbing volume as it ate the CD about a year later (OK, I did knock it half out of the tray as the drawer closed!).

Had about 10 cds I'd bought in sales since 1989 but couldn't afford a player for about another two years !....remember buying Green by REM.

I waited until 1994 to buy my first CD player. First purchase? Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band: Clear Spot. Just to hear that long reeling note float..

After my first year at Uni I did some vacation training at Philips and so managed to get my first CD player at staff discount price. Went out and bought 4 CD's - Kate Bush / Hounds of Love, Genesis / Wind & Wuthering, Dire Straits / Love Over Gold & Police / Greatest Hits.

I guess there had to be a Dire Straits album in there !

... I made a pretty good choice I think.

It was It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back by Public Enemy, having previously only had it on tape and, as other poor people may remember, it cut out before Rebel Without A Pause came on which could be awkward if you had something on the other side that you didn't want to tape over.

I still have it. And it plays fine. Perhaps there was some truth in all the guff written about CD's when they first appeared.

Once again 1988, a Sony CD player bought, my first purchases were a Creedence Clearwater Revival compilation and a Smokey Robinson & the Miracles collection. Most of my early CD purchases were back-catalogue - the first contemporary one that I remember was 1990s The Good Son by Nick Cave.

I'm trying to remember when it was that record shops made the decision to move CDs to the front of the shop and hide the vinyl at the back or in the basement. It seemed to be a near-simultaneous move by all shops - my guess is early 1989?

I bought The The "Mind Bomb" on Cd and bought the Cd player a few weeks later - late 1989 if my memory is right. De la Soul's "3 Feet and rising" was another early one purchased.

My first wage packet went on a Sony stereo and 2 CDs - Tallulah by the Go-Betweens and The People who grinned themselves to death by the Housemartins. One of which I still listen to regularly.

'Last Splash' as we got 'Pod' on tape. So 1993 then. Still have it. Started playing it again recently - think it's great. I reckon I might like it better than other other US indie style guitar bands of that era. None of that whining and excessive sour angst - much more of an up feel, playful in fact is the word. I think I am getting carried away. I do like it though.

I waited for REM's new album to come out so that it would be my first CD. So I bought 'Out of Time' (1991?) and then my Sony CD player to augment my separates set up*.

* Dullard PS - NAD 3020e amp still in use, rest broken & replaced.

I was a latecomer, didn't get one until '94 and taking the tray's cherry was... The Best Of The Hollies.

My spanking Sony music system I got for my 21st in '86 was christened with the 7" of What Have You Done For Me Lately by Janet Jackson. I must have been having an off day. But it sounded sensational. Next up was Sledgehammer, which sounded even better.

Funhouse by The Stooges. This would have been late 1980s. I was a rock-n-roll kid in that decade and had probably worn out my vinyl copy hence the need to enjoy "LA Blues" in all its digital glory. With amp hum and stuff.

Also I think it was an import title and hence came packaged in one of those cardboard "longboxes" which at the time were standard for CDs in the USA. Whatever happened to them?

Around 1993 or 1994 - I bought 4 in one go - Pat Metheney - Secret Story, Eric Clapton - unplugged, A World Party cd but I am not sure which one and another one which for life of me I can't remember.

I'd picked up a Sony 5CD multichanger and has a few mins before my lift to pick a CD. Ended up with 'End of the Innocence' by Don Henley. The Sony came with a 5 free cd offer so ended up with Born to Run, Nebraska, Leonard Cohen's Greatest hits and Roachford's first album for some strange reason.

I'd just got married and was bought a massive Pioneer stacking system with 6-CD changer as a present (£499(!) from Next). A 6-CD changer demanded 6 CDs to play on it so I bought - at hideous expense - BeBop Moptop by Danny Wilson, The Bible by The Bible, Astral Weeks & Moondance (horrible early masters both), Hats by The Blue Nile & Girls, Girls, Girls by Elvis Costello. They're all still here somewhere. Which reminds me, I later sold the stack to Cardiff's foremost Jimi Hendrix impersonator & delivered it to his house, a terraced job so full of guitars & amps that I could barely get through the door. My buyer was 5' 4", white, had a baldie mullet & spoke with a mid-Atlantic drawl despite having lived in Wales all his life. I saw him play a while later &, aside from the pronounced physical differences, he was Hendrix to the life.

I was buying my first player (saving up the earnings of my first proper job), and the nice chap at the store knocked off a few dollars because I was paying cash. First album I saw that I'd heard of was Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, which I hadn't actually heard at that point. Purchased without thinking; never regretted it. Unlike some of my later, more thought out choices.

...I resisted CD´s at first, mistrusting them as a fad. I had my beloved vinyl and not so beloved tapes. First one I ever bought , I think, was "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle.
Got over 1,000 of the bloody things since.

I think it was 1990 and I got Wind & Wuthering by Genesis...and shaking the tree by Peter Gabriel...all for my birthday...on my good old pa's Dixon's Store Card...that card was/is completely responsible for any gadget fetish I might be suffering from now...

Still...15 and buying Genesis and Gabriel...seems a little odd looking back...no regrets though...

a Denon from Hi-Fi corner in Glasgow (don't look for it, it's not there now), then down to Tower for a purchase - Vanity/Nemesis by The Celtic Frost was choice one, then up to His Master's Vibes for Game Over (with The Plague 12") by Nuclear Assault. I still have Vanity/Nemesis and treasure it with every listen, Game Over was, well game over for me and the Assault.
Great live band, all the same.

Eno - Thursday Afternoon (a CD only release - which I bought before my CD player)

The Damned - Machine Gun Etiquette

Roxy Music - Roxy Music

At the time I bought these, Radio Rentals had just added CD players to their list of hireable desirables

After much deliberation, I succumbed to the shiny new CD players in 1989 - got a rather splendid Sony separate player which was on offer at Richer Sounds in Leeds, and matched my Sony stack system rather nicely (AND is still working solidly at my parents, where they play all sorts of untold Daily Mail free compilations!!)...

So first CD purchases to go with this bold buy were:

S-Express (self-titled first album) - probably because they were a cool dance band on the Mute label and it sounded great on the new digital system!

.. and big purchase along with the big player purchase was the David Sylvian 'Weatherbox' CD box set, which still sits proudly in my collection, still looks great for a collective box set, and still goes for decent money on EBay if I ever ever have to sell up!!

I spent a mini-fortune that weekend I can tell you, but loved every minute of the shiny silver miracle - it was years before i realised that I missed that warm vinyl sound!!

I'd just got divorced and treated myself to the boys toys (CD player, new TV, new bed!). First CDs needed to be cheap and so were a compilation of John Peel sessions and a classical CD called "Sacred Songs" which was a group of choral works of a religious nature (I'm not religious but was brought up that way and have the nostalgia) including my favourite "Ave Verum Corpus" (Mozart). Still play both of them regularly.