…only to fall due to a perfect storm of marketing machinations, tight-fisted PRs, and shiny new rivals.

In one way at least, DCC was a very brave move—in the preceding decade, Dutch conglomerate Philips had successfully launched the billion-selling CD format, plus CD-ROMs, and the beginning of CD-I. Of course, all this had been done in conjunction with Japanese Sony. Yet for its digital cassette venture Philips abruptly decided to abandon Sony and entered a completely new alliance with an up-and-coming Japanese firm: the Kadoma-based Matsushita (the Japanese giant that is now known as Panasonic).