At my highschool, which was a prestigious boarding school in the UK, I was told that CS is not a "real" subject and I should study Maths instead.
This is terrible advice. However, I don't think my experience is unique and have to believe that many university applicants were given (and maybe are still given?!) similar guidance.
Even if you're in the mindset that everyone should study a "real" (pure and academic) subject, I'd say CS fits that description fine. It varies by university (probably unlike maths), but there are still plenty of highly theoretical, mathematical, and academic CS courses
There are a few comments comparing Minidiscs to CDs, I think that's the wrong way to look at the format.
My mental model for Minidiscs is much more similar to tape, it was so easy to use them to record. As a teenager this was the most exciting thing about them -- you could record ~CD quality audio from CDs (I had so many MD mixtapes!) or the radio. On top of that, you could make your copy feel polished by adding track markers and names, giving you information about the track playing when listening and letting you skip back and forth between songs.
This was a huge upgrade from cassettes and an upgrade from CDs because you didn't need to go through the rigamarole of burning.
Of course, this doesn't even touch upon industrial design of the units which has already been well covered in this thread. If you'd like to browse through some old units and get a sense of that, I recommend minidisc.org.
Edit: Aha, I see now, this is a mic'd recording of an MD player with a built in speaker.