Window of Opportunity CD-ROMs, The International Music Industry and Early Australian Initiatives

Over the last five years the CD-ROM has risen to become a prominent new-technology medium and consumer item. This paper documents and analyses the development of CD-ROM software by the international music industry and contextualises this development within a broader history of format successions. It discusses the influential XPLORA 1 disk assembled in collaboration with Peter Gabriel's Real World Company and the manner in which this CD-ROM set what has developed as a standard blueprint for the first wave of music CD-ROMs. The paper then provides a case study of the Australian music industry's exploratory use of the medium during 1994, and the relation of that exploration to national cultural policies. The study concludes by speculating as to the likely obsolescence of the CD-ROM form and its likely dis/re-placement by media such as the Internet.