Lou Ottens, the cassette tape's inventor, has died at age 94. The former Philips engineer died on Mar. 6, sending waves across various social media platforms.
Ottens' invention is one of the innovations that changed how the music industry works. Without his cassette tape, music platforms today might have been different.
According to Engadget's latest report, the tech inventor started working on his cassette tape way back in the early 1960s. His invention was the solution to the large reel-to-reel tapes that provided high-quality sound.
However, his former cassette tape was still considered too expensive at the time.
Because of this issue, he changed its design to make it smaller. After he successfully shrunk it, the price of cassette tape also decreased.
"Lou wanted music to be portable and accessible," said Zack Taylor, a documentary filmmaker who interviewed Ottens previously to film the "Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape."
How the cassette tape helped the music industry
As per NME, Lou Ottens was able to make a deal with Sony, which launched his invention into the mainstream and became global. This made his creation, the standard cassette tape, which was later used across the globe despite competition from imitators.
Previously, it was estimated that the cassette tapes that were sold during Ottens' time were around 100 billion units.
Without Lou Ottens & his inventions, there would have been no C60 Club, no @austeritylabel & probably a lot less of the passion that was formed during our formative years of music/audio fandom. Thanks for the music, man. RIP 🖤 pic.twitter.com/VUiPMcMipg
— austerity records. (@austeritylabel) March 11, 2021
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Besides this, Ottens also played a key role in Phillips and Sony's point of development of the compact disc in 1979, during his time as the technical director of Phillips Audio. The debut of CDs in 1982 was big, because of this new innovation, the total number of CDs sold around the world reached 200 billion.
Right now, cassette tapes are still popular in different countries, although they have become rare. The British Phonographic Industry claimed that in the United Kingdom, around 157,000 tapes were sold by the end of 2020.
Take note, this is during the national coronavirus lockdowns.
Most popular cassette tapes
Since cassette tapes played an important role in the music industry, it was also used to record various best-selling songs from different artists. These include "CALM" by 5 Seconds of Summer, "Weird' by Yungblud, "Chromatica" by Lady Gaga, "and Notes on A Conditional Form" by The 1975.
Lou Ottens developed the cassette tape so that the public will have a cheaper option if they want to listen to music. This inventor literally started working from scratch because he envisioned something that didn't exist in his time.
Thanks to his effort and passion, the music industry improved in the following years, and it will continue to do so.
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Written by: Giuliano de Leon.
