The Rainbow Books are a collection of CD format specifications, generally written and published by the companies involved in their development, including Philips, Sony, Matsushita and JVC, among others. A number of these specifications have been officially adopted by established standards bodies, including the ISO, IEC, and ECMA.

Red Book (1980)

Yellow Book (1983)

Green Book (1986)

Orange Book (1990)

Orange is a reference to the fact that red and yellow mix to orange. This correlates with the fact that CD-R and CD-RW are capable of audio ("Red") and data ("Yellow"); although other colors (other CD standards) that do not mix are capable of being burned onto the physical medium. Orange Book also introduced the standard for multisession writing.

Beige Book (1992)

White Book (1993)

The White Book refers to a standard of compact disc that stores pictures and video.

Blue Book (1995)

The Blue Book is a compact disc standard that defines the Enhanced Music CD format, which combines audio tracks and data tracks on the same disc.

Scarlet Book (1999)

Scarlet color of this book is a reference to the Red Book, which defines original CDDA.

Purple Book (2000)

A standard developed by Philips and Sony in the late 1990s, with over 1 GB in capacity and recordable/re-recordable capabilities.