Perhaps it’s not surprising that the first CD release was of classical music. Classical enthusiasts had more audiophiles in their numbers than pop fans in 1982, when the Dutch company Phillips developed the CD as we know it now. They marketed it following a five hundred day “crash program” to get a pressing plant up and running. Berlin Philharmonic conductor Herbert von Karajan was a strong advocate of the new format. By August 1982, Phillips had a pressing plant in action. The first CD they pressed was Herbert von Karajan conducting the Alpine Symphony by Richard Strauss. By the winter of 1983, about half a million CDs had been pressed. Phillips had developed the CD in close cooperation with Sony. Engineers from both companies had been working together for years to solve problems and establish standards for the new format, and it was adopted more rapidly in Sony’s homeland, Japan than in the U.S.

The first CDs– from Phillips Company web site
The life of Herbert von Karajan