Imagine that when it finally did come out that instead of uncompressed 44.1hz music data, the CD held a regular file-system with compressed MP3s that the CD player played.
[Also imagine that the late 90s badly compressed MP3 disaster never happened, and that these "CDs" magically have the best MP3 compression available to today's point where most people cannot tell the difference between the compressed and uncompressed versions]
What you'd have is similar to the DVD. The DVD is just a file system with an MPEG compressed video and a standard file system and menu format. The audio (usually) and video are compressed. In commercial video land, there is no concept of "uncompressed video" except amongst technical video nerds.
Imagine much later that they announced and released a "much better quality" CD which uncompressed audio. Lets say they called is super-CD or something else stupid. It's basically the same, but better quality, and costs much more. And you need to buy a new CD player to play it. And it makes your entire collection "obsolete".
What you'd have there is BlueRay.
In all technical descriptions, BlueRay kicks DVD out of the park. The audio is usually uncompressed. The video is much higher resolution and less compressed. Compression technology has improved.
BUT, who can tell the difference? Sure, the images are sharper when you look at it side by side (and you magically find a BlueRay that is actually set up properly so it doesn't jitter all over the place).
But look at a DVD on almost any TV and pretend BlueRay doesn't exist, and it looks great. I frequently watch DVDs on a friend's massive projector screen, and only rarely do I notice compression artefacts (usually during the credits). I see them all over the place when I look. I'm sure if he had a BlueRay set up it would be clearer, but I don't NEED it to be clearer.
Only those with metre wide LCD TVs are going to notice any real difference. If they get up really close. And only if they consciously compare.
I hate to suggest that the uncompressed CD probably would have failed if it took until now to be released, but there you go.
I suppose this same logic applies to my calls for lossless digital audio stores...