CD players lost their ground in the 2000s following the advent of the MP3 format, but they have recently returned to the limelight thanks to K-pop girl group aespa.The quartet, which will put out its first full-length album, “Armageddon” on Monday, announced Friday that the album will also be made available in CD player version. This rendition comes with a working CD player, wired earbuds, photo cards as well as graphic stickers, and is priced at 145,000 won — approximately seven times more expensive than ordinary albums.
Nonetheless, the CD player albums are already sold out on many platforms, including SM TOWN&STORE, an official online store run by aespa’s management company SM Entertainment. The exact number of preorders is unknown, but hundreds of thousands of people are known to have put the albums on their wishlists. They will be released on July 19.”It seems more than 1 million CD player albums will be sold,” a fan commented on the online community, theqoo. “I think SM should produce more to cater to demand.”Another wrote, “I am not a 스포츠토토존 follower of aespa, but I still made a preorder to get a good CD player.”