I always thought 8 tracks were awful, even when they were popular. My first question is, why did they come out in the first place? Weren’t cassette tapes already available? What was the purpose of having two forms of tape available?
Next, why did they stop making them? Was it because sales were slow, or did someone wise up as to how awful they were.
I can’t beleive they’d stop making a product if it was selling well.
finally, are there any artist making their music available on 8 track yet? If so, why?
Well, Steve Albini and Big Black seem to have an opinion about this practice of “planned obsolescence.” Analogizing CDs to older media in the liner notes of The Rich Man’s Eight Track Tape they say this:
THIS COMPACT DISC, COMPILED TO EXPLOIT THOSE OF YOU GULLIBLE ENOUGH TO OWN THE BASTARDLY FIRST-GENERATION DIGITAL HOME MUSIC SYSTEM, CONTAINS ALL-ANALOG MASTERS. COMPACT DISCS ARE QUITE DURABLE, THIS BEING THEIR ONLY ADVANTAGE OVER REAL MUSIC MEDIA, YOU SHOULD TAKE EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO SCRATCH THEM, FINGERPRINT THEM AND EAT EGG AND BACON SANDWICHES OFF THEM. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THEIR LONGEVITY, AS PHILLIPS WILL PRONOUNCE THEM OBSOLETE WHEN THE NEXT PHASE OF THE MARKET-SQUEEZING TECHNOLOGY BONANZA BEGINS.
Great album, too. I wonder when I’ll be able to get it on DVD?
You’re right, the cassette tape did come first. It was developed in 1962, first sold in Europe in 1963, and first sold in the US in 1964. The 8-track wasn’t sold until late 1965. But the 8-track wasn’t all new; it was a refinement of the 4-track, which came out in 1956. Both 8-track and 4-track were originally intended for use in cars.
From 8-track heaven
The 8-track was a modification of music cartridges (“carts”) used at radio stations. Back in the late 60s and early 70s, the radio stations copied the songs with a lot of airplay onto a music cartridge and played it from that, not the record. It was easier to cue, you couldn’t knock the tone arm, it would skip, etc.
Carts were the same size as 8-tracks. The main difference is that they had a hole in the bottom where a wheel engaged to pull the tape evenly. They also had an automatic stop when the tape came to the end.
When people were looking for a way to put recorded music in cars, the cartridges seemed a good idea. They were modified slightly (the hole for the wheel was removed) and sold. Since there were fidelity problems with cassettes at the time, the cartridges were able to provide superior sound.
The big problem was timing. It was very difficult to break an album into four equal sections, so songs had to be rearranged or cut in parts. You would usually hear your favorite song fade out in the middle, then a few seconds of silence, then a “click,” more silence, and then a fade in. Very annoying.
Cassettes also had the advantage of being recordable. Though radio stations would routinely erase and rerecord on a cart, that capability didn’t carry over. And because of the timing problems, people only used 8-tracks in their car, where they couldn’t record anything; home players were available, but weren’t successful.
There wasn’t any “plan” to make 8-track obsolete. Everyone involved thought they were the answer. Unfortunatly for them (though maybe fortunately for everyone else), they were wrong.
IIRC, the casette was originally developed as a dictation tool for office memos and typists. So while it may have predated the 8-track, it wasn’t originally conceived with the thought of high fidelity music reproduction. The physical characterisitics bear this argument out.
If you want quality in tape recording, you use wide tape running very quickly, so that the signal density is all squashed into a small area of magnetic medium. This is the way professional recording studios did it before digital - their (wide) tape usually ran at 15 inches/second, as opposed to 1-and-7/8 inches/second that cassettes do. The downside is, of course, that you use much more tape.
Premium grade tape formulations like chrome and metal were unknown prior to the evolution of cassettes into a hi-hi medium. If you wanted better sound, you ran the tape faster as you recorded (assuming that your tape was of reasonable quality to start with).
I think that’s what killed 8-tracks off. They had the idea of wide tape and a faster running speed, but the bulk of the package would have been a drawback because of the extra tape length. I also believe they had a complex mechanism that required a dry lubricant, leading to jamming problems after a lot of use.
OOPS!!
“If you want quality in tape recording, you use wide tape running very quickly, so that the signal density is all
squashed into a small area of magnetic medium.”
This should read: “…signal density is not all squashed…”
Well, PK, IMHO, 8-tracks disappeared because the 8-track tape player, especially when installed in a car, had an unparalleled ability to eat tapes. Every time you pulled up to a stoplight, you used to see piles of mangled tape shimmering in the gutter, remnants of the “P.O.S. 8-track”. Now that everybody has CDs, you don’t see that so much anymore. Ah, the good old days…
Oh c’mon guys, how can you not just LOVE 8-tracks? The continuously running tape that you never need to eject and turn over, no tape cases to mess with, the wonderful broken song that appears on every damn tape, the slurring and bogging that occurs when the tape isn’t in just right…
Up until about six months ago, when I sold my 1980 Buick Park Avenue, I was still listening to one of those damn things. Now I’ve got two cases full of 8-track tapes just sitting in my garage. What the hell am I supposed to do with them? I think I’ll give them out to trick-or-treaters next Halloween… 
A long time ago I read a quote from Ted Nugent concerning 8 Tracks. He claimed to have a clause in his contract that all his albums had to be released on 8 Track as well as cassettes and vinyl (this recollection predates CD’s) because he didn’t want his fans with 8 Track players in their pick-up trucks to have to get new equipment.
I had some 8 Tracks so worn that all four channels could be heard at once.
The television station my husband works for had a fully operational cart machine up until about a year ago that they used daily for audio “crawls.” They still have it as a back-up!
Also, the campus radio station where I go to school used a cart machine for all their PSA’s and ads when I was a D.J. there (3 years ago). (They may still use it!)
So, cart machines are still around and in use!
Hell, Lisa uses one every day. ::looks up from desk:: BILL! What are you doing? Get in here! Don’t tell Matthew that. He already bothers Joe enough as it is! ::picks up coffee:: ::switches coffee to other hand:: ::brings coffee to lips:: ::alll-most drinks, but puts back down at last second::
–Dave
Ooh, Ozone, those things are COLLECTIBLE. Don’t throw them away, they’re worth money. Every collectible/flea market I’ve seen lately has tables full of old 8-tracks. Check out the Internet, too.
Even trashy old broken ones. It’s amazing the things that some people will buy.
“Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” – H.L. Mencken