Original subtitles

(upbeat lively music)

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- [Narrator] The compact cassette or compact audio cassette,

also commonly known as the cassette tape

or simply tape or cassette,

is an analog magnetic tape recording format

for audio recording and playback.

It was developed by a company by the name of Phillips

in Belgium and released in 1962.

The compact cassette technology was originally designed

for dictation machine, but improvements in fidelity

led the compact cassette to supplant

the stereo eight-track cartridge

and reel-to-reel tape recording

in most nonprofessional application.

Its uses range from portable audio to home recording

to data storage for early microcomputers.

The first cassette players were designed

for use in car dashboards and was introduced in 1968.

Between the early 1970s and the early 2000s,

the cassette was one of the two most common formats

for recorded music, first alongside the vinyl LP record

and later, the compact disc.

(upbeat lively music continues)

- [Child] Is there vanilla ice cream?

I want some, Mommy. - Oh, yeah. Come down.

I'll have to wash your hands. - Mommy, I know.

- [Child] You already got some.

- [Child] I like green flowers. They're good.

- [Child] Can I have another birthday tomorrow?

- [Announcer] Capture the moment.

The Sony portable Cassette-Corder has

a built-in condenser microphone

and works on batteries or plug in.

- [Child] I wanna- (button clicks)

- [Announcer] The Sony Cassette-Corder,

one of 42 great Sony tape recorders

at your Sony Superscope dealer.

(upbeat lively music)

- [Narrator] Many great memories were recorded

on compact cassettes from childhood banter

to late night underground radio shows

to all the popular hits of the 1980s and '90s.

Even retro video games were stored on cassettes.

The cassette tape as we know it

was originally released in 1968.

It was the perfect combination of versatility,

high quality, and small size.

It was the fit-in-your-pocket, carriable, user friendliness

that drove the miniaturized compact audio market of today.

Your modern day iPhone is just another Walkman

with a phone and camera built into it.

The idea of a pocket-size portable audio system began

with the introduction of the cassette tape Walkman

in 1979 by Sony.

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(bright lively music)

(bright lively music continues)

(announcer speaking in foreign language)

(bright lively music continues)

(announcer continues speaking in foreign language)

S Walkman J

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- [Announcer] It's a Sony.

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- [Narrator] Exactly 40 years after the Sony Walkman

was introduced, a whole new generation

of portable pocket-sized audio and video gadgets

had popped up to take its place, such as CD players,

mini-disc players, and soon, MP3 players,

and now Cloud-based Bluetooth devices

such as smartphones and streaming services.

The sales of prerecorded cassette tapes

dropped off significantly in the early 1990s,

but surprisingly as of recent, cassette sales

of prerecorded music has actually been increasing.

Cassette tape sales grew 123% in 2018 alone,

a rather surprising fact since the format

is over 50 years old and considered

an ancient relic to many, but many underground record labels

and musicians as well as some popular artists

are starting to release new music

on limited-edition compact cassette tapes,

(gentle upbeat music continues)

But can cassette tape still go on

or will it all come to a definite stop?

Rewind.

(rewinding tape screeching)

No, cassette tapes will go on

as new ideas and uses are conceived.

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♩ Music lives on TDK ♩

(bright lively music)

♩ Music lives on TDK ♩

(upbeat lively music)

♩ Music lives on TDK ♩

(gentle uplifting music)

♩ Music lives on TDK ♩

♩ TDK, TDK ♩

- [Narrator] It is said that alternative uses for cassettes

can serve as a computer data backup storage device,

and an average 90-minute cassette can have the capacity

to store over 500 gigabytes of data.

(gentle upbeat music)

Who knew that many tech companies still use cassettes

as a means of long term data storage

simply because the format can last over 20 years?

Now, can your computer last that long?

Hold onto your old decks because the modern cassette tape

could soon be reinvented.

In 1935, almost three decades before the introduction

of the earliest commercially-released cassette tapes,

a German company by the name of AEG developed and released

the first reel-to-reel tape recorders

by the name of Magnetophon.

The Magnetophon was the first magnetic tape recorder used

in professional applications.

To go with the recorder, another German company

by the name of IG Farben produced the magnetic tape reel.

The tape reel was based off the invention

of the magnetic tape in 1928 by German inventor

Fritz Pfleumer which used similar technology,

a long flexible metallic material

that could be wound in a spool to record sound on.

The invention of the phonograph in 1877 by Thomas Edison

was the first commercially released audio recording format.

That invention served as the inspiration

to many other recording innovations to come.

In Fritz Pfleumer's case,

it was a metallic wire wrapped around a spool.

The wire recorder was the first device to record sound

on a substance that could be wounded around a spool.

Although these wire recordings were impressive,

the invention of magnetic tape

or a metal oxide-coated plastic tape wounded

on a spool yielded even higher quality recording results

and became the standard in audio production

of music and voice and even data.

(upbeat lively music)

(door whirring)

(cassette tape whirring)

- [Announcer] A tape of this quality deserves

to be played in the most sophisticated of systems

(cassette tape whirring)

Because Sony premium tape has more music

where other tapes have distortion and hiss.

(cassette tape hissing)

Sony Audio Tape. It's the closest you can get to music.

- [Narrator] When the very first magnetic tape recorder

or the Magnetophon came out,

they were very difficult to use

and were only used by radio stations and recording studios.

Many developments were made

to the magnetic reel recording format

after its initial patent by Fritz Pfleumer in 1928.

In the 1930s, another major breakthrough was added

to the open tape reel format to move it closer

to the awesome sound quality

which the magnetic tape reels could have.

In 1958, following four years of development,

the RCA Victor company introduced

the stereo quarter-inch reversible reel-to-reel RCA

cassette tape cartridge.

However, it was a lot larger

than the standard cassette of recent years.

This initial tape was seven inches wide by five inches long

and offered very few popular album releases.

Despite the multiple attempts in the commercial market,

the initial larger consent format failed.

- [Announcer] The new RCA Victor deluxe models include

the completely automatic features of reversing

and shutting off, playing up to two hours of music

at the push of one button,

making it unnecessary even to turn the cartridge over.

Presto, tape reversed, sound head switch to the B track,

all without the touch of a hand.

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- [Narrator] Consumer use of magnetic tape machines

took off in the early 1960s.

After playback machines reached

a comfortable, user-friendly design,

this was aided by the introduction of transistors

within the electronics that made the machines work,

which replaced the large, bulky,

and costly vacuum tube components of earlier years.

Reel-to-reel tape then became more suitable

for household use, but still remained a rare product.

The invention of the transistor revolutionized the market

for portable audio technology and other electronics.

Now, electronic products could be made smaller

and you could take the music around with you anywhere:

on the boombox, on the Walkman, or simply on a deck

in your home entertainment system.

With the birth of the transistor came the start

of a revolution and smaller,

more manageable home recording technology

like such as the audio cassette tape.

His name was Fritz Pfleumer,

an Austrian-German inventor in the 1920s.

Pfleumer had the innovative idea of coating paper

with iron powder to make a cheap magnetic audio tape.

This paper tape was fragile, but it would replace

the existing expensive magnetic solid-steel tape,

and his new paper tapes could be edited

with a pair of scissors rather than a soldering iron.

First, Pfleumer took his invention to Berlin,

a major industrial city at the time,

to the electric companies AEG and BASF,

which were the leading manufacturers

of electronics at the time.

To Mr. Pfleumer's success,

the companies purchased the patents.

So on from the ideas of Pfleumer's patents in 1932,

four years after Pfleumer initial invention in 1928,

the companies set up a team to work on a commercial device

that could be used with this magnetic paper tape.

AEG teamed up with the German chemical giant, IG Farben,

to produce the world's first magnetic tape recorder

that would revolutionize sound recording,

but disappointingly, when AEG demonstrated

their new invention at the Berlin Radio Fair in 1935,

it was a complete flop.

(gentle upbeat music)

What you hear is what was recorded on April 27, 1935,

in the Ludwigshafen theater using

one of the earliest AEG Magnetophon

prototype magnetic tape recorders.

Four different Magnetophon prototypes were built

between 1932 and 1935, and one was used

in the 1934 Berlin Radio fair.

But these early innovative devices didn't come

without a fair amount of trouble,

especially a major design issue where the tape would break

if you did not wait until the wheel stopped

before playing or rewinding the tape.

There was no fast forward and the cap stand motor

was not spinning at a constant speed,

and because of the inconsistent speed,

it produced audible pitch variations.

More improvements went into the design

and its improved successor became known

as the Magnetophon KA.

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On the 1935 recording, the cuts, pitch variations,

and other sound effects that you hear are authentic,

and that is the original sound quality of the tape.

The original Magnetophon magnetic tape recorder

was not quite the sensation they hoped for.

The machine was heavy, sound quality was poor,

and it took a real professional to operate the machine,

but still the radio engineers didn't give up hope,

and at the time, looked at the Magnetophon

with stars in their eyes and said,

"You know, I think we still have something here

if perfected more."

This magnetic tape would be the ideal format

for recording on.

The tape can be snipped with scissors and tape

or glued back together with ease.

These new capabilities would be a dream come true,

but one problem, the original AEG Magnetophon

in 1935 sounded so terrible that the quality

can only be used for speech and dictation

and not high quality musical performances.

The Nazis used the early Magnetophon to listen in

and to record telephone conversations,

but its commercial potential, as AEG recognized,

was extremely limited.

They instantly saw that there would be no real business

based on dictation purposes alone,

and they had to have the possibility and the technical means

of recording music because even in 1935,

commercial sales of phonograph recordings

of popular music was in the millions,

and a Magnetophon that can record music well,

well, that would be good for business.

(bright uplifting music)

In 1936, as the Nazis consolidated their power in Germany,

the world famous orchestra conductor,

Sir Thomas Beecham, took his orchestra to Berlin

and made this famous recording

on this new Magnetophon equipment.

(bright sprightly music)

But the recording was a disaster and sounded terrible.

In fact, Sir Thomas was so horrified by the quality

of the Magnetophon that he refused to use the Magnetophon

or magnetic tape technology

on his performances again for the next 20 years.

Just as World War II was breaking out in 1939

came an accidental discovery

that changed the career path of the Magnetophon.

A German radio engineer named Walter Weber stumbled

on a signal processing method called AC bias

that enabled the magnetic tape to record high fidelity.

Weber one day was experimenting with circuits,

advanced circuits that would try to get this horrible noise

and distortion to a minimum and make the tape sound better.

He discovered in the lab almost by accident

that AC bias can oscillate a tone that could be used

to superimpose over the tape's recorded information

that would make the recorded information stand out

and sound much better.

A second test was carried out on the new

and improved Magnetophon recorder,

and this revolutionary new breakthrough

that German technicians had been searching for

was the introduction of the high-frequency bias Magnetophon

to the public, and it took place in a huge Berlin cinema,

and the audience was amazed.

That was the moment everybody recognized

that magnetic recording is the best method

for recording music, and hence,

the revolution in magnetic tapes began.

(bright upbeat music)

(explosions booming)

By the 1940s, as Germany launched its assault

on the Soviet Union, the Magnetophon

became a must-have item for wealthy Germans.

An American report at the time described how Hitler himself

at the height of the fighting acquired

his own Magnetophon machines for military use.

Hitler was first introduced to the Magnetophon

at his headquarters on the Russian front in 1942,

and immediately he ordered a plane

to bring additional symphony recordings from Berlin.

The Nazi propaganda machine knew it was a breakthrough

in recording technology and exploited the new possibilities

that the Magnetophon had offered.

Hitler ordered six of these machines and discovered

the Magnetophon could be used to time shift speeches

with a sophisticated radio network passed down

by the Nazis from the previous German democratic regime.

Hitler could now record a speech on a Magnetophon

in one city for transmission in another city.

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Hitler used a new technology,

as the recording was almost unidentifiable

from a real person's voice

to deceive US allies as to where he was.

This was one of the first examples of,

"Is it live or is it Memorex?"

Which the phrase presumably came a little later, of course.

(piano note thuds)

- Are you ready?

- We're ready Ella.

- All right, fellas.

- Nelson Riddle, you've been arranging

the Ella Fitzgerald jazz sound for years

- Yes, that's right.

- Can you tell if that's Ella live or a recording

on Memorex cassette tape with MRX2 Oxide?

- No, I can't.

(Ella scatting)

- [All] It's Memorex.

- That sounds live to me.

- [Announcer] Is it live or is it Memorex?

(explosions booming)

- [Narrator] Hitler's speeches were tape-delayed,

and sent around different places in Germany.

The Allied forces reconnaissance monitoring

of German broadcasting and radio stations

would hear him speak in one city, but then soon,

he would be in another city.

All of these quick movements allowed Hitler

to buy more time as Allied forces

couldn't penetrate without knowing exactly where he was.

And this confusion is why they really couldn't pin down

his exact location at the time.

As the war drew to an end,

the invasion and looting of Nazi scientific secrets

by victorious Allies began to incur.

(gentle calm music)

US Army Signals Corps Major Jack Mullin

and his team were given the job of investigating

and finding out new German electronical innovations.

Mullin had heard about and been intrigued

by the audio quality of these German broadcasts.

A few weeks after the German surrender,

Mullin had heard a recording

from one of the newer Magnetophons at the time,

which had the AC bias signal implemented in the machine.

The recording was so great that Jack Mullin

was so greatly impressed by its clean sound

with no background noise or distortion that Mullin shipped

a few of these improvised machines and many rolls

of this German magnetic tape back to the United States,

and in May of 1946, Jack Mullin went public

with these tape recorders and it changed the course

of the broadcast and music industries forever.

The news and sound was a sensation.

In May of 1946, started the boom

of American tape recording technology.

Singer and actor Bing Crosby was the first Hollywood star

to widely use this new technology

from the Nazi archives of electronic innovation.

Bing Crosby was a top performer at the time, and he found

that live radio performances were getting harder,

and he didn't like broadcasting live anymore

because he wanted a way to only deliver

his best performances to the television audience.

Bing heard about these amazing new machines

from Jack Mullin, and he hired Jack Mullin

to be his sound recording engineer for his television show

and to record and edit his show for later broadcast.

It was the first time magnetic tape was used

in a professional televised American broadcast,

and the audience loved it.

♩ It rains pennies from heaven ♩

(bright lively music) (audience clapping)

♩ Don't you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven ♩

♩ You'll find your fortune falling all over town ♩

♪ Be sure that your umbrella is upside down ♩

♩ Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers ♩

♩ If you want you the things you love ♩

♩ You must have showers ♩

- [Narrator] At this time in Bing's career,

he was suffering from a lack of viewership for his TV shows,

but when he started recording on the magnetic tape format,

all of a sudden like a lightning rod,

his ratings shot back up.

Bing's television networks ABC and NBC were flooded

with calls from customers

that mentioned the good quality of the shows,

but the television recording technology didn't change.

It was only just the sound,

lifelike and real, warm and magical.

The benefits of magnetic tape had become awesome.

(upbeat lively music)

Back to the future,

are cassette tapes making a comeback?

(quirky upbeat music)

Call it nostalgia or call it inspiration,

call it whatever you want,

but there is still a nice-sized chunk of the population

that still uses compact cassette tapes

as their recording medium of choice

despite all of the digital options

for recording on the marketplace,

but as top musicians like Ariana Grande

and Justin Bieber release new music on cassette tapes,

the demand continues to climb.

The niche compact cassette tape revival is spreading fast

and quickly and has forced global record companies

to rethink the reproduction plans,

not only releasing music for digital downloading,

but on CD, vinyl, and even cassette as well

as this is 2019, not 1989.

Who would have thought that an ageless relic,

a dinosaur of an age past will still find new usages

and is still on the up and up and still reigns popular

in the underground and collectors' market.

Now two facilities, one in the American Midwest

and the other in Western France,

have stepped in to meet the need.

In the year 2000, it is said that was the year

the cassette tape officially died

and the reign of the compact disc became apparent,

(quirky upbeat music continues)

But recording books on tapes remains popular,

but despite the astronomical rise of streaming,

punk, hip hop, and rock bands like Pearl Jam

and The Smashing Pumpkins began seeking

to market these recordings that were released on cassettes

as a tribute to the old school and classic sound.

This convinced even more major record labels

that they was still interest in the cassette

as a commercial music format.

Several years ago, a company named National Audio

bought 300,000 reels of tape from a South Korean company

that gave up on cassette tape production.

As sales increase and the stockpile began to shrink,

National Audio was faced with a challenge:

to either produce their own original cassettes

or go out of business.

The business invested several million dollars buying up

old equipment from defunct cassette manufacturers,

and in 2017, National Audio manufactured

18 million audio cassettes,

mostly being sold to record labels.

Reports of the cassette death were greatly exaggerated

as even today, many people young and old

still keep a tape recorder handy for quick transmissions.

(quirky upbeat music)

It's a '90s vibe, a preference thing.

Some like their music clean,

others may preference a more dirtier sound,

like it or not.

The cassette tape is here to stay,

a much dependable format,

and some wish that it could never go away.

So let's get those graphic equalizers from out of the garage

and let's pump that bass or perhaps turn down the treble

for cassette tape recorder, and no, I am not a rebel.

(quirky upbeat music continues)

- Watches?

(seller speaking in foreign language)

Radio cassette. I see?

(bright upbeat music)

(speaks in foreign language) Paul Newman!

(seller speaking in foreign language)

Automatic shut-off, tape counter.

(speaks in foreign language) You sell me this?

Sell me?

1,800 rupees? No?

(sighs) 2,000 rupees cash. No?

- This is a very good set, Bush Baron made in India.

I bought it from there.

- Ooh. Ooh!

- [Announcer] Now available in two models.

Bush, the number one two-in-one.

- There you go. Latest.

(child speaking in foreign language)

(car horn honking)

(seller speaking in foreign language)

- Good day. Welcome sir, welcome.

Psst, one bargain,

very good radio cassette, two-in-one.

- Are you sure?

- Sure.

See the quality, Bush radio cassette.

(buyer speaking in foreign language)

- Very cheap. Only $200 cash.

Eight minute. (grunts)

(boss speaking in foreign language)

- [Announcer] Bush, the number one two-in-one.

(door creaking)

(father yawning)

(father grunts)

- [Father] Huh?

Hurray!

- Papa! - Papa! Papal!

(wife speaking in foreign language)

- Papa! - Papa!

Papa! - Papa!

- [Father] Huh? (grunting)

(vocalist singing in foreign language)

(wife speaking in foreign language)

- [Announcer] Now available in two models,

Bush, the number one two-in-one.

(upbeat lively music)

- [Narrator] Many would say there's still a place

for analog sound in today's digital music world.

If you've ever spent hours sitting by the radio waiting

for your favorite songs to come on so you could record

on your cassette recorder,

you should be excited because through the availability

of new recordable cassette tapes still on the market,

you can now still relive those experiences.

(upbeat lively music continues)

Let those '90s vibes stay with you.

It's quite a uniqueness and as the old saying goes,

"if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Cassette tapes are still being used for a reason,

not just in amateur setting, but for professional use:

the small size, the ease of recording,

and playback without any programming or fuss.

Despite its many downsides, this is why

the cassette tape still offers fantastic potential.

Cassette tape album sales in the US grew by 123% in 2018

according to Nielsen Music, jumping from 178,000 copies

the year prior to 219,000.

It's nothing compared the 1994 sales

of 246 million cassette albums, but still very significant

considering the format was all

but dead by the mid-2000s.

(upbeat lively music continues)

But who could imagine a world without analog?

The world around is analog.

Our ears and eyes are analog.

Digital recordings are very clean and sharp,

but there are no harmonics.

These are digital pictures of audio recordings, if you will.

The consumer public is fickle and trends always change,

but for the foreseeable future,

people will always stay a little crazy

for vinyl records and cassettes.

Last year in 2018, vinyl LPs saw revenues hit

their highest level since 1988, totaling 419 million,

an 8% jump from the previous year.

Though vinyl sound quality to many

is unquestionably superior to cassette tapes,

the small size and mostly lowered costs makes them superior

for vintage music collectors, but as new inventions come

to fruition in the digital computer age,

can cassette tapes still thrive in the future?

Analog magnetic tape has always been used

in early computer technology for data storage,

but how much can a single compact cassette tape hold

in today's data storage terms?

Well as we found, cassettes are still in massive use

for long term data storage for professional computing firms.

Every computing cluster uses them.

They have a very high lifetime, usually at least between 20

to 50 years compared to other storage mediums

and are still very dependable for long term storage of data,

music, images, and even video.

(bright lively music)

Cassette tapes for video recording has been in use

since the 1980s with the introduction

of the Fisher-Price PAL 2000 video camera in 1987

that used a cassette tape as its recording format.

Although the modern cassette recording speed moves

much too slow to capture high-quality video images,

the PXL 2000 still offered a low grade, grainy,

black-and-white video image

that could be instantly played back and enjoyed.

- [Announcer] You've always been heard,

but now you can be seen.

Introducing the PXL 2000 camcorder,

with the same audio cassette that makes your music.

It makes videos.

Sight and sound that's easy to handle.

(bright lively music)

Just shoot and play back on the PXL 2000 TV.

The PXL 2000 video system. Now you can be seen and heard.

(upbeat lively music)

- [Narrator] A standard audio cassette tape stores

both video and sound.

The PXL 2000 holds 11 minutes of footage

by moving the tape at a high speed,

nearly nine times the normal percent playback speed.

The PXL 2000 records

at roughly 16.875 inches per second

versus a standard cassette speed

of 1.875 inches per second.

The higher speed is necessary because video requires

a wider bandwidth than standard audio recording.

In magnetic tape recording, the faster the tape speed,

the more data can be read or written per second,

which equates to a higher bandwidth.

The PXL 2000 recorded the video information

on the left audio channel of the cassette

and the audio is on the right.

The camera also was marketed to kids and teenagers.

Amazingly, the pixelated quality

of the PXL 2000 is actually used

as a very abstract video medium to this day.

(upbeat lively music continues)

Modern cassettes have the ability to hold

as much as 500 gigabytes of data

depending on its application.

Holding 500 gigabytes of data on a small, lightweight,

and portable medium with the ability to be stored

for up to 50 years is still quite a milestone.

This and many other usages for cassette tapes have come

to pass in recent years as well as improvements

in tape quality from the introduction of better metal oxides

being used on the tape like ferric oxide and chrome dioxide,

also known as metal tape.

So where will the future lead? Is it analog or digital?

Even though we live in a mostly digital world now,

at the backbone of that technology lies

a format that's well tried and true,

and its lifespan cannot be doubted.

The modern cassette tape will forever go down

as one of the most brilliant human breakthroughs

of our time, and who is to say that even future residents

will undoubtedly find much to be thankful for

in the compact cassette tape.

(wind whooshing)

- [Announcer] When it's recorded on a tape

that's built to standard 60% higher

than the industry calls for.

(robots gibbering)

Rock and roll is really here to stay.

♩ You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain ♩

♩ Too much love drives a man insane ♩

♩ You broke my will, but what ♩

- [Howie] This is Howie Maxell,

employing you to save bonuses spots.

(upbeat lively music)

- [Narrator] "Cassettes Go Hi-Fi,"

written and directed by Dwayne Buckle,

narrated by Myles Wright,

presented by Vision Laboratories,

distributed by 360 Sound And Vision LTD.

(upbeat lively music continues)

(upbeat lively music continues)

(upbeat lively music continues)

(upbeat lively music continues)

(upbeat lively music continues)