Vinyl Records Research Notes
Other Formats Research Notes – Other People’s Presentations
Presentation with Alfie about Vinyl Records.
Other formats that were not as successful:
8-Track:
The 8-track tape came about around the 1970’s however it never really took off. Why? Although favoured over vinyls for their portability, they were notorious for their many problems. For example they were known to break due to the fact that they were cheaply made and the tape inside often became very easily tangled and that also caused them to become broken, rendering them useless. That however did not stop car companies like Ford from putting them into their cars. The problems did not stop there, due to the limited size of the tape, it was common that songs would end in the middle or fade in and out at strange points. This of course had a huge effect on the quality of the audio and by the time the cassette had been invented, 8-track tapes became virtually non-existent. After all, cassettes were smaller, better quality and much more durable.
Floppy Disk:
This one is easy to answer. The simple fact that technology is constantly progressing is exactly why floppy disks never had a chance to take off. Floppy disks were used in computers to transport small files from computer to computer and therefore were quite limited in storage capacity. As they were being used around the same time as cassettes, the floppy just wasn’t desirable due to its lack of portability. Now we don’t use them because modern day computers do not have floppy drives to read the disks.
MiniDisc:
The Sony MiniDisc was the ideal format for ‘technophiles’ who loved all things music technology (Faulkner, 2012). Unfortunately due to the sheer expense of MiniDiscs vs CD’s, people always chose the CD. Spending excess money on a disc that could read and write for the common consumer just was not worth it especially if they only wanted to listen to music and not record it. Despite the lack of interest upon launch, Sony did not give up. They decided to relaunch the MiniDisc in 1997 and yet again, no one was interested. CD’s had taken over and the MiniDisc paled in comparison. By the time the benefit of using MiniDisc rather than CD was discovered, Apple’s first iPod had created a newer, better way to listen to music and it was too late.
Bibliography:
Faulkner, J. (2012). MiniDisc, the forgotten format. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/sep/24/sony-minidisc-20-years [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020].