Header image via 8lacknightshade’s DeviantArt
Cassettes used to rule the world. If you’re older than 25, chances are your first experience with music not on the radio came from a cassette tape. I know people from my generation perfected the art of the mixtape, painstakingly crafting the perfect double-sided tape to express our love to all of the cute girls of the world. With the advent of the CD and MP3 in following years, cassettes died a quick, fiery death. While it’s not uncommon to catch indie bands pressing music on to cassettes these days, the format carries nothing more than a kitsch aesthetic for those that want to make their lives extra analog.
However, the cassette tape is about to find a second chance at life thanks to Sony and IBM, but not in the way most of us may remember it. Last week, Sony announced their development of a cassette tape that can hold up to 185 terabytes of data. 185 TERABYTES. To give you perspective, that’s 3,700 Blu-rays’ worth of data, with each square inch of tape able to hold 148 GB. The development of the “super” cassette tape bucks the cloud trend, allowing Sony to create a tangible product that can store a plethora of data for tech companies looking for some serious backup storage.
While Sony has plans to release their new cassette tape commercially, it won’t attract everyday users as they’re not intended to store playback files like games, music, and video. Rather, as I mentioned previously, they’ll be targeting tech companies looking for industrial-strength means of storage. Don’t call it a comeback, kids.
[via Consequence of Sound]