The Red Shoes - CD Card Divider

Original CD Card Divider, or CD Bin Divider - whichever you prefer to call it. It measures 5¾” x 7¾” and it’s made from pretty study cardboard for a more long-lasting wear. The artwork is featured on the front only and these would have been used inside of record stores in the CD section to promote a new release or an artist’s available catalogue.

For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember when vinyl was actually in stores, when they stupidly made away with it in favour of the CD, it left a lot of useless space because the shelving units or bins were specifically designed for one thing only – vinyl records. If you stop to consider the size difference between the two formats for a moment… that was a lot of empty space in bins at the time. To combat this a little, when CDs were first released they were issued in a long box  format (I wish I kept all of mine). A long box was basically a cardboard box that the CD came in. It had the same height as an LP did, but it was also only as wide as a CD… so what you had was a long skinny box. So even though spaces in record stores were still awkward, the long box format made it a little less so… but not by much though.

After a few years they made away with long box format altogether, and basically started selling them as you see them today. These CD Card Dividers were used as a transitional tool more than anything else. They still promoted an artist’s work, but they were also a lot cheaper to produce, with less waste. These soon became redundant too and disappeared altogether. They finally replaced them with those cheap plastic index type cards you see now in stores.