Along with the use of new audio enhancement technology to improve the sound quality of Phantom, a popular method of printing and distributing music increased the fame of the show. The Broadway experience, which once was a luxury that people could not afford, became a widely consumed good that was disseminated through compact discs (CDs) (Maslon 2018, 200).

In the 1940s, the ability to be able to physically print music on long playing records (LPs) became a staple way to democratize the chance to hear the music of Broadway (Maslon 2018, 4). American households were now able to enjoy Broadway in the comforts of their own living rooms (Maslon 2018, 4). Many Broadway shows were able to benefit from LP technology, finding many of their songs reaching the very top of the Billboard Charts as the advent of LP Broadway Cast Albums became a commodity (Maslon 2018, 5). As beneficial LP technology was to the cultural spread of Broadway, people still had issues with the LP that was eventually able to be improved upon by the CD. The cassette had been introduced as a viable alternative to LPs due to its compact and portable nature years later (Maslon 2018, 194). However, the packaging of the cassette was off putting, as the album cover and liner notes had to be folded and packaged along with the physical tape, and like the LP, the cassette had to be flipped over for Act Two (Maslon 2018, 194). The CD succeeds where the cassette failed: the CD did not have to be flipped over to hear the rest of the musical because more music could be printed and stored on it (Maslon 2018, 200). And unlike the LP, listeners were able to decide where to start playing on the CD without having to physically find grooves on the disc (Maslon 2018, 201).

While Phantom of the Opera did not debut on Broadway until 1988 (Jones 2005), the American public’s love for Broadway cast albums were hardly dismissed in the years between the LP’s introduction and Phantom’s debut (Maslon 2018, 201). After the release of the Phantom CD a month after its Broadway debut, its synthesizer title track reached number 98 on the Billboard 100 (Maslon 2018, 202). From the advent of CD technology, Phantom’s popularity was able to soar.