The Rise and Fall of the 8-Track

Excerpted from "You Really Got Me,"
copyright © 1994 by Doug Hinman and Jason Brabazon

Ignoring DAT (Digital Audio Tape) and DCC (digital compact cassettes), both new and controversial digital tape formats, cassettes are the only format of prerecorded audio tapes offered for sale today. Such was not always the case, as 4-track and 8-track cartridges, reel-to-reel tape, and the all but forgotten PlayTape format all preceded cassettes. Each took its turn in the marketplace, with varying degrees of success. The car culture of the United States spawned the notion of tapes as an alternative to popular records, conceived as a means to give the American driver the option of listening to the music of his or her choice while in transit. It seems appropriate therefore to first look at the history of prerecorded tape in the U.S.

The first prerecorded tape format offered to the consumer was reel-to-reel, available as early as the 1950's. Its physical characteristics went through a number of permutations before standardizing; in fact, stereo reel-to-reel tapes were marketed before the introduction of the stereo LP. However, the material available did not include rock for some time. Aimed at audio enthusiasts who owned reel-to-reel tapedecks, the selections offered on reel-to-reel reflected the supposed partisan palates owners of high-end equipment were presumed to have, and the tapes were, for the most part, sold in hi-fi shops and electronic stores, not in record stores. Titles by rock artists did not take their place alongside the classical music, opera, ballet, and jazz offered on reel-to-reel until the mid '60s, after the successful marketing of pop and rock music on 4-track and 8-track cartridges.

Four-track and 8-track cartridges coexisted on the marketplace for some time, with the 8-track format eventually defeating by attrition its look-alike cousin (before in turn being overtaken by the cassette format). Although extremely similar in appearance (the only obvious difference between the two being a large hole in the top left underside of 4-tracks), the two formats were not at all compatible, having been developed and marketed by two different and competing factions. The 4-track system was refined and marketed as a car accessory by Madman Ernie Muntz, a west-coast used car dealer looking for something he could offer as an accessory to boost his used car sales. His marketing and distribution arrangements were spotty at best, relegating the 4-track format to the inferior (when compared to 8-track) status of a regional phenomenon, most popular in such locales as California (Muntz's home base) and Florida, but unpopular or unknown in many other areas.

The 8-track format, on the other hand, was developed by a diverse consortium that included the Ampex Magnetic Tape Company, Lear Jet Company and RCA Records, and enjoyed the tremendous advantage of being championed at its inception by Ford Motors, which in 1965 (debuted September 15) offered 8-track players as an option in their complete line of 1966 model cars. At first, 4-track and 8-track tape players were just car accessories. Home players were not introduced for another year or so. Accordingly, both 4-track and 8-track prerecorded tape cartridges were originally sold only in such outlets as auto parts stores and roadside truck stops.

The 4-track cartridge format had had a head start over 8-tracks. Originally developed in 1956 (also in conjunction with Ford Motors), the 4-track format was originally forsaken as unmarketable, and lay dormant until the early '60s, when enterprising Ernie Muntz saw its potential. He acquired rights to the format and began marketing both hardware (players) and software (prerecorded tapes), licensing music from major record labels. It was perhaps Ernie Muntz's initiative that rekindled Ford's interest in offering an in-dash tape cartridge system. The development of the 8-track format took the basic 4-track technology and refined it, making changes designed to make the tape less likely to jam while playing, and to increase accessibility to individual selections on the tape.

Unfortunately, these modifications had the effect of diminishing sound quality. In the 4-track format, the pinch roller (the wheel that moves the tape along as it plays) was housed in the player. In the 8-track system, the pinch roller was housed in the cartridge itself. As each cartridge now required its own pinchroller, plastic ones were used in favor of the softer (but more expensive) rubber ones found in 4-track players. The wear and tear on the tape inflicted by the hard plastic pinch rollers after multiple playings was greater. The biggest modification effected to 4-track to transform it into 8-track was to double the number of programs. The 4-track cartridge had two programs--the tape played all the way around the loop, then switched to the second track and did the same thing all over again. In fact, the format took its name from the fact that two programs, each with two tracks of information (left and right channels of a stereo mix) equals four tracks.

Cartridge players allowed the listener to flip between programs in the middle of the tape. The decision was made to double the number of programs in the new system from two to four--the tape went through all four tracks, changing tracks a total of four times before returning to the starting point--so that the listener might be closer to a song of his or her choosing when flipping between the 8-track's shorter programs. To make this possible without doubling the width of the tape, the width of the individual tracks (the portion of the magnetic tape onto which each individual signal is recorded) was cut in half, reducing the amount of signal each track could hold and thus diminishing sound quality.

Another unfortunate side effect of doubling the number of programs was that manufacturers often found it expedient to rearrange or interrupt an album's individual songs when programming 8-tracks. The two programs of the 4-track format were like the two sides of an LP, each holding roughly half the total program material. The desire to make all four programs as close in length to one another as possible (to avoid a long silence at the end of a particular program before the unit switched to the next) resulted in extensive rearrangement of the order of LP tracks, in an effort to find combinations of songs the sums of whose playing times equaled each other, or else (worse!) simply splitting up some songs between two programs, such that the music would stop for a couple of seconds in the middle while the machinery changed to the next track, wherein the tape head actually moves down a fraction of an inch to the next pair of stereo tracks on the tape (a process punctuated by an audible *click*).

For the next few years, the two configurations contested for consumer allegiance. New titles continued to be released on both, and the two look-alike formats were often marketed side by side in retail outlets. (One interesting collecting note is that early 8-track cartridges had a shape slightly different from the more familiar one seen later--known as Lear-Packs. This is because 8-tracks were initially developed by electronics whiz Bill Lear for his Lear Jet Corporation who contributed in the refinement of cartridge technology primarily in developing a plastic housing that was vibration resistant and would permit play at any angle. The cartridge's housings had a protruding rectangle ledge along the top of the posterior end [which stuck out of the player] unlike the smooth rounded edges of later 8-track cartridges.)

Despite 4-track's potential to deliver better sound quality, it was the 8-track format that eventually dominated. Not the least reason for this was Ford's de facto endorsement. The physical similarity between 4- and 8-track cartridges permitted the development of converters that fit into the increasingly obsolete 4-track players and enabled them to play 8-tracks.

While this war of hegemony between 4- and 8-track systems was being decided, other formats of prerecorded tape were making their bid. The least remembered of these is the PlayTape format, introduced in 1966 with the backing of MGM Records. Basically miniature 2-track cartridges, PlayTapes could be played only on players marketed by the system's developer, sold primarily at Sears stores for about $20. In contrast to the bulky 4- and 8-track car (and later home) units, which ran on AC current, PlayTape units were lightweight, portable, and battery operated, with speakers not unlike those found in the transistor radios at that time. In this way they prefigured the cassette players and boom boxes (and later Walkmans) that offered their users almost unlimited flexibility in terms of where they could listen to the music of their choice, and which did much to make the cassette format ultimately so popular.

Nevertheless, this format never really caught on. Its failure (particularly considered in contrast to the success soon afterward of the cassette format) may have been due to the lack of a well-heeled sponsor, such as Norelco/Philips, developer of the cassette format, to suckle it in a milieu already perplexed by the battle between two competing formats, and perhaps because, unlike cassettes, PlayTape's maximum length was under 30 minutes, making it impossible for an entire LP's worth of material to fit onto one of the small cartridges. PlayTapes came in lengths of eight songs (so-called LPs), four songs (EPs), and two songs (singles), with prices diminishing accordingly.

Since its inception years earlier, the reel-to-reel format, existing as a sound carrier option for well-heeled audiophiles, had offered a much narrower range of titles than had records. By the mid-60s, however, the marketers of prerecorded reel-to-reel tape, perceiving that the success of 4- and 8-track cartridges signaled public acceptance of tape as an alternative to vinyl, began to offer mid-brow titles alongside the classical, jazz and other styles which had previously been the extent of reel-to-reel's domain.

Increasingly, only the best selling LPs were chosen for release on the format, which, although enjoying some popularity with audiophiles for a while, never achieved sales numbers of 8-tracks or (later) cassettes. The reel-to-reel format, like the other prerecorded tape recorders (unlike the hardware associated with the other casualties of the format war) remain for sale on the market to this day. Reel-to-reel's demise can probably be largely attributed to the fact that its mediocre production standards did not allow it to deliver on its promise of superior sound quality, disappointing the audiophiles who would perhaps otherwise supported the format. Prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes were available into the early 1980's, bolstered (as were 8-tracks) by being one of the options offered by the major U.S. record clubs.

When first introduced in the U.S., prerecorded tapes were considered merely an adjunct to records. They were thought to appeal to a different set of consumers, and for the most part were not sold in record stores or music shops. Reel-to-reel tapes were sold in hi-fi stores, 4-tracks and 8-tracks in auto supply outlets. The first generations of 4-track and 8-track were in-dash car accessories. The portable PlayTape players were designed to be carried on one's person, the same as a transistor radio.

By 1967, however, the 4-track, 8-track and PlayTape formats had all introduced home players, designed, like reel-to-reel tape decks before them, to be hooked up to home component systems, or sold as part of new built in multi-format systems (i.e., a turntable and an 8-track player together). For the first time, prerecorded tapes of popular and rock material had the potential to supplant records, as they could be played in the home as well as out of it (some home 4-track and 8-track units served the additional function of being able to record). The various manufacturers of each format of prerecorded tape: Ampex (8-track cartridges), Muntz (4-track cartridges), Stereotape (later Bell & Howell, still later Magtec) (reel-to-reel tapes) up to that point had leased the rights to manufacture these tape formats and distribute them through their own distribution networks.

By the start of 1968, the thinking of the music industry as a whole was moving toward treating tape releases as the equal of vinyl releases, rather than their subsidiary. Feeling that the then customary delay between a title's release on record and on tape (typically a month or so) was hurting tape's sales as well as its image as a viable alternative, record companies began to push for an industry-wide policy of simultaneous vinyl and tape release of new album titles.

Thus far, this discussion has been confined to the marketing of prerecorded tape in the United States. Some reel-to-reel tapes by rock artists (notably the Beatles) were issued in the UK. To this point, neither the 4- or 8-track cartridge format had been exported beyond North America, developed in the U.S. to appeal to drivers, these formats' success outside the U.S. car culture seemed unsure.

The cassette format, however, evolved in Europe for use with small, battery operated player/recorders, which did not depend upon cars for the portability. Invented as much for recording as it was for playback of prerecorded tapes, the commercial potential of prerecorded software was nevertheless not overlooked. Developed by the Norelco and Philips companies (the latter being the same company which, fifteen years later, combined with Sony ion the invention of the compact disc, and thus was involved in both halves of the one-two punch that KO'd vinyl records), cassettes were marketed worldwide, and were, in fact, test marketed in Britain and other parts of Europe in 1966, more than a year before their introduction in the U.S.

Cassettes were originally disdained by audio critics as very low-end technology, even compared to 8-tracks. The tracks themselves (the portion of the magnetic tape holding the information) were only half as wide as those on 8-tracks, and cassette tape moved at half of 8-track's speed, combining for a very low perceived potential for sound reproduction. However, the cassette format offered a number of features that found favor with U.S. consumers more interested in convenience and versatility than high-end sound reproduction. Cassettes were inexpensive (blanks then sold for between $1 and $2 U.S.), players were portable and could record as well as play, and the tapes were smaller and yet could hold more music (up to ninety minutes, and later a full two hours) than preceding formats. Thus, cassettes actually caught on more quickly in the U.S. than in Europe, in spite of the U.S. market saturation of the 4- and 8-track formats.

Slowly but surely the cassette format nudged its cousins out of the U.S. marketplace. PlayTapes were obsolete by 1970. 8-tracks became pretty well entrenched at about the same time; 8-tracks and reel-to-reel tapes--the only format which, despite its deficiencies, was taken seriously by audiophiles--hung on for some time, buoyed by record club sales for years after their demise in retail stores. As time proved the tenacity of the cassette format, engineers endeavored to improve its quality and eventually elevated cassettes to the rarefied air of high-end audio.

Though the British music industry began releasing 8-track cartridges at the same time as it introduced cassettes--while the 8-track format was still enjoying success in the U.S.--this format did not sell well in theBritish marketplace and had faded out by the mid-1970s.

Today, in a marketplace dominated by the CD, the cassette remains essentially the only alternative format, since vinyl records were eliminated in many world markets by 1990. The DAT (digital audio tape) format was prevented from being marketed to consumers by the big U.S. record companies who claimed to fear digitally perfect copies of CDs; the DAT format is currently used mainly in professional recording studios, and few recorded tapes were ever issued in this country.

As of 1993, the digital compact cassette had appeared on the market to compete with the traditional cassette. This so-called DCC format brings digital quality to the cassette format and its players are designed to play both DCC and traditional cassettes. The Sony mini-disc is another entry in the confused marketplace of the '90s; its is a play only mini-CD designed for portable players, like the original Sony Walkman. Neither the DCC nor the mini-disc are being embraced by consumers, perhaps due to skepticism over having to (yet again) begin purchasing a new audio format.

Excerpted from "You Really Got Me," a comprehensive history of the Kinks, by Doug Hinman and Jason Brabazon. Article by Jason Brabazon.

For more info, email Doug at AP201182@brownvm.brown.edu

Back to [CONTENTS]