The cassette tape is making a comeback after Sony announced that its new "reinvention" can allow users to store some 47 million songs on a single tape. The question now is whether anyone in today's fast-changing tech world will want to go back a couple of decades to when people used a pen or pencil to rewind the now obsolete technology.
But Sony is hoping that changing how one views the cassette tape for the modern times can be a huge marketing tool whereby older generations will see the idea as one of recapturing a period of technological innovation that has long passed. It is getting an upgrade, a massive one.
According to Sony, the magnetic tape technology will give users the ability to store 180 terabytes of data on a single tape. That is the equivalent to 1,184 iPod Classics. The overall storage of the tape means it can store around 47.3 million songs.
Most agree that is a bit excessive, but shows Sony is serious about moving toward reinventing a technology that largely went extinct in the mid-1990s as the CD replaced how people listened to music.
"Sony will jointly announce these results with IBM Corporation, who assisted with measuring and assessing the recording density of this new technology, at the INTERMAG Europe 2014 international magnetics conference to be held in Dresden, Germany beginning on May 4," Sony says in a press statement on the matter.
The Japanese tech manufacturer is promoting the new tape as a way of storing an almost infinite - at least more music than a person can listen to in a lifetime - amount of data on one cassette.
"This areal recording density is equivalent to approximately 74 times the capacity of current mainstream coated magnetic tape storage media, and makes it possible to record more than 185 TB (terabytes) of data per data cartridge," the company adds.
Online, users are already clamoring about the return to classic technology with a modern approach. By giving the tape a return, Sony is playing to the hearts of users who have longed for the technological innovation speed to slow down and this gives those wanting a return to something familiar the edge. But most observers are skeptical that Sony will have a winner with the new cassette, even with its advance storing ability and massive space.
