Founded 1983 | ||
Parent organizations Sony Corporation, Sony Corporation of America Subsidiaries Coqueiro Verde Records | ||
Sony digital audio disc corporation dadc
Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation (Sony DADC) is a manufacturer of CDs, DVDs, UMDs, and Blu-ray Discs. The company has many plants worldwide. Although it primarily services Sony Music Entertainment-owned record labels, it also manufactures discs for other labels.
Contents
Sony DADC's first plant, in Terre Haute, Indiana, opened May 2, 1983, and produced its first CD, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A., in September 1984. It was the first CD manufacturer in the United States, is the company's principal CD manufacturing facility, and is the company's research and development center.
The plant was initially a subsidiary of CBS/Sony Group, but Sony bought out CBS's stake in October 1985.
When Sony bought CBS Records in 1988, it acquired that company's manufacturing facilities, some of which later became part of Sony DADC. Among these are the plants in Pitman, New Jersey (closed in 2011); Terre Haute, Indiana; Toronto, Canada (plant closed in 2011); Mexico City (plant closed 2015); Salzburg, Austria; Mumbai, India; and Manaus, Brazil—all of which were originally manufacturers of vinyl gramophone records. These plants began manufacturing CDs later—Pitman in 1988, Manaus in 1992, and Toronto and Mexico City in 1994.
LaserDiscs, primarily 12-inch disc prints of feature films and concerts, were manufactured by Sony DADC in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the laserdiscs currently show laser rot, more than from any other manufacturer.
Sony DADC now manufactures the majority of CDs sold in the United States. In November 2008, the company bought the American disc-manufacturing capabilities of Glenayre Technologies, which manufactured the discs of Universal Music Group. In the summer of 2009, the company assumed the physical distribution of EMI's North American operations. This left WEA as the only major label whose discs are not manufactured by the company, as its discs are manufactured by the operations of the former WEA Manufacturing that were sold to Cinram.
On August 8, 2011, a Sony DADC distribution center in Enfield was destroyed during the 2011 England riots. The warehouse was used by independent music distributor PIAS Entertainment Group to distribute CDs, LPs, and DVDs for over 100 European independent labels. The total stock loss in the fire was reported to be between 3.5 million and 25 million units.
Manufacturing codes
Printed on the discs or packaging of Sony DADC-manufactured CDs are codes indicating master copies (matrix numbers) of discs. These codes begin with a 4-letter prefix followed by a series of digits. Common prefixes include the following: