In the age of MP3s and social networking websites, the quality of sound has dropped immensely in the past several years. With digital downloading and piracy, people are buying less and less CDs and settling for the poor quality MP3s of their favorite jams. This, of course, leads to the inevitable decline of the music industry.

However, the Japanese have done it again – they are here to save the biz. And how? By making higher quality CDs!? More after the jump.

Universal Music Japan and JVC developed what is now called the SHM-CD (Super High Material CD): it is made out of polycarbonate plastic with improved transparency to enhance the audio quality of the CD. Interestingly polycarbonate is actually the same material that is used to make LCD monitors. Ok so what does that mean?

It means that by using this different material to create the base of a CD, the quality of sound, when played, is much higher. That’s great, but can it be played on our CD players and Computers?

Yes! That’s what’s amazing about these SHM-CDs. In the past, the Japanese have also created CDs made out of glass, but that could only be played on a specific CD player due to it’s weight. They have also created the SA-CD but those were unable to be played on laptops. Not only that but the SHM-CDs are also fairly reasonably priced (equivalent to $25 per CD) compared to the glass CDs (going for about $200 per CD). You can currently purchase many albums by your favorite artists on SHM-CD.

So the next question is, would people pay for these SHM-CDs to get higher quality music or will people continue to settle for lower quality MP3s?

SHM-CD (via Yahoo Japan)

By Taeko Saito