Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: 8 Track Cartridges

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

8 tracks were during vinyl, but preceded cassettes. Why? So people could listen to their music on the go. Check out this antiquated medium today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. boss that they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you happen to get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. It's just us.

Neither Jerry nor Dave is here. So it's short stuff, the bereft edition. That's right, I wanna thank NPR, capture.com, a website called PS Audio, a website called EverPresent, and more for the research that went into the 8-track cassette player or 8-track cartridge itself. April 11th is National 8-Track Tape Day, so we've missed that. But if you don't know what an 8-track is,

it preceded the cassette tape. And we're gonna get into what this thing was. Yeah, you usually wedge it in between LP record albums and cassettes, because that's basically where it really popped up. In the 70s is kind of where you really associate eight tracks, but it was way older than that. Apparently as far back as the 40s,

it was essentially coming into development, right? Yeah, which surprised me. You might be wondering, like, why did we need eight tracks at all? And it's because at the time, dear listener, especially younger dear listener, if you wanted to play the music that you wanted to hear, you could play it on your record player in your house. You didn't have a record player in your car,

you had a radio that played whatever the heck they wanted. So all of a sudden eight tracks came along as a mobile version, a way to take the music that you wanted on the road, either via your car or via these awesome portable players, of which we had one of that was a Lloyds. We had a deck in our conversion van, of course, but we had just look up the white Lloyds 8-track portable player, and that was the very one.

I found it online and I might even get one on eBay. It brought back so many nostalgic memories. That's awesome, and you totally should. One of my friends in high school, Mitch, not dirty Mitch with scabies, but different Mitch. That's how I was gonna think. His grandmother had a huge white Lincoln Continental with an eight-track deck in it.

Yeah, baby. And we got our hands on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on eight-track, and we would just cruise around listening to that in that car. It was pretty boss. Skipping forward two songs at a time, ish. hands on a Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on 8-Track, and we would just cruise around listening to that in that car. It was pretty boss. Skipping forward two songs at a time, ish. Yeah, yes.

That's something I can't wait to talk about, but just a little background on how this worked. It was built on ancient technology from the 20s and 30s, which was magnetic film, which became reel-to-reel film. And essentially, that is tape that has magnetized metal particles on it and when sound is converted into an electrical impulse the tape writer translates that into well it's an electromagnet it translates it into a magnetic pulse that arranges these these pieces of magnetic metal into ones and zeros

and then the whole thing is done backwards on the other end when you listen to it. This is the basis of not just 8-treks but cassette tapes. But since 8-treks came first, this is what they were built on over time. And there were a few inventions that kind of were stepping stones that led to the 8-trek. Yeah, I mean the Germans were using it in World War II, the Allies got a hold of it and eventually it got to the music industry and they were like, hey we got a thing now that we can play this stuff on the road we think in a continuous loop and the very first person to achieve the version that could go to market was a

guy named William Powell Lear, the creator of the Learjet. Previous to this, there were some sort of housing and internal guts things that were worked out by various people. A guy named George Eesch in 1953 came up with the NAB cartridge or the Fiddle-Fiddlepack cartridge. It's also called a cart. If you ever heard of like on Debbie Care

or Cincinnati or old radio stations, they had carts, music carts. That's what that was. These were built for radio stations. Yeah, it was short for cartridge slang, I guess you'd call it. Yeah. So that was followed up by the Muntz Stereo Pack.

And it was created by Earl Madman Muntz and he directly influenced the development of the A-Track because William Powell Lear was riding around in Madman Muntz's car when he was playing one of the Stereo Pack cartridges for him. But the thing that really kind of separated Muntz from everybody else is he's the first one to go directly to the

record companies and say like, hey let me license your music and put them on this new format and let's start getting it out there. And like I said, William Powell Lear was like, this is a great idea. I'm gonna build on this and create a longer playing version of it

and I'm gonna call it the eight track. Yeah, and then Vintage Jet. Yeah. I should point out too quickly, and this can't be a coincidence But Earl Madman Muntz was the creator of that cart if you're a Coen Brothers fan and a fan of the movie Barton Fank you will know that John Goodman's character name is Carl Madman Munt. Oh really and there's no way that's a coincidence

No, I don't know the correlation or if it was just they got they thought it sounded cool or something Who knows what a strange homage if it was just they got they thought it sounded cool or something who knows what a strange homage if it was there Agreed Should we take a break? Yes Chuck? Yeah. All right We'll be right back with more on the bygone era of the a track right after this So all of this was being developed in the 50s, I think as early as the 40s technically, but the 8-track really came into its own in the mid 60s. And the reason why is because the Ford Motor Company said, hey, everybody, have you heard of these 8-tracks?

Well, we're going to start putting 8-track players in our 1966 model cars as a high-end option and as more and more cars started featuring 8-track players, 8-track cartridges just became dominant as the form of how you listen to music outside of your home in a way that you controlled unlike radio. Yeah for sure. They were pretty cheap. They were two to three bucks. The most expensive on record was the Beatles Greatest Hits released in 1970. That was almost five bucks, four dollars and ninety-seven cents which would be... That's the nice price. Yeah the nice price. That'd be more than forty dollars today. So that was you know that's an expensive eight track for sure. It hit its popularity in the

mid 70s and I guess we should talk a little bit about how these things played. You've got the magnetic tape that you described inside on a single reel, and there was a little motor that pulled the tape across the audio head to make it make the sound, but you're probably, if you don't know what these are, you're probably like, what is the eight tracks?

What does that even mean? Each tape had eight tracks and a sensing strip that told a solenoid coil like, hey, a program is over, which was roughly two songs, and now it's time to switch over to the next track. So when I said you could skip ahead two songs at a time, if you hit the button, it would pop forward the two songs roughly.

So weirdly, I wanna say just one thing because I don't want us to get emails. I saw in one place that it actually had four tracks, but there were two of each of the four tracks, so they were in stereo. So two times four was eight. I only saw that in one place. Everywhere else kind of described it

as eight different tracks like you just did. But I just wanted to put it out there. All right. So yeah, so this whole thing, what differentiates it from cassette is that it played continuously. It was an endless loop, right? So I guess if you pressed play,

it would play the whole album over and over again until you pressed stop, is that correct? Yeah, and the point is you didn't have to flip it. The downside of that is you couldn't rewind it or fast forward it except for skipping two songs ahead, but you couldn't go back two songs as far as I know. Okay, so that was kind of one of the downsides. Another big downside is that these tracks were not,

like they just took an album and they cut it up into four equal amounts of time, or eight equal amounts of time I should say, right? So if one track could fit one and three quarters of a song, that three quarters of a song would fade out, maybe a click, and then when the next track started, it would fade back in. And people hated that. Of course they did, that's very clunky. Maybe a click and then when the next track started it would fade back in and people

Hated that of course they did that's very clunky understandably So but that level clunkiness really kind of gets across the just the kind of Attention to detail that was given to eight tracks they as far as technology goes they were perfectly encompassed by what they looked like. Clunky, giant, plasticky, and just clunky, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it was interesting. They deserved to be popular for a while because it was such a revolution and to be able to listen to what you wanted to outside of your home. But the other limitations, you know, not rewinding stuff like that,

apparently the internal components would fail a lot of times. Like the cassette itself was very sturdy and long-lasting, but the little motor and stuff, that would fail. Your car was famous for eating the tapes. They had a lot of downsides, but that didn't outweigh the initial upside of being able to take your music on the road. No, for sure. I mean, that was a big deal. Like I never was like,

this eight track sucks when we were listening to Saronite Fever. So, I mean, it couldn't have been that bad. But I think for people who are like really into music, it was probably very annoying. Yeah. Well, the irony is, is that the cassette tape was introduced in 1965, kind of, either just kind of squarely in the middle of or just before eight tracks were at their zenith of popularity. But they

weren't marketed like bands weren't releasing music on cassettes at first. It was just like, hey, here's a cassette and you can record yourself at home and interview your parents about what life was like in World War II. Yeah, do your own story core at home and interview your parents about what life was like in World War II. Yeah, do your own story core at home. Yeah. Yeah, so people were like, I can start taping songs off the radio with these things. And essentially, it's just kind of an avalanche from there. Cassettes took over because you could fast forward, you could rewind.

And even though you had to flip the cassette, the worst thing that you could possibly have to do in the world, they were way cheaper than 8-treks too, just to produce and to purchase. So cassettes pretty quickly took over and interestingly this is also happening at the same time with video. VHS tapes were overtaking Betamax and Laserdisc at the same time too. What were you about to say, the worst thing you would have to do? That was an addendum to having to flip a cassette tape. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say if the tape unspooled some, you would have to put a pencil or use your pinky finger to rewind the tape

and draw that magnetic tape back into the cassette. I always had to use a pinky because I never had a pencil because I wasn't a nerd. Well, I had one in my front pocket, my breast pocket. What else you got? Anything else? Just a couple of tidbits. There was a museum for a little while. There was an enthusiast named Bucks Burnett in Dallas, Texas that had a museum because

he collected them. And it seems like it was open for a handful of years. The largest collector now is a guy named Gary Heitzman, who apparently has close to 100,000 tapes. He may have more than that because that was 2019. Yeah. And the most, there's actually a very valuable one, Frank Sinatra, it's called Sinatra Jobim,

Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim, which I bet is a great record. Yeah. Because they did a limited pressing, of course. It's scarcity that makes something valuable, and they only did 3,500 copies of that one. And if you have one of those, you can get a few grand for it, apparently.

Why not? What are you gonna do? You're not gonna do anything to look at it. You might as well sell it. Yeah, get one of those Lloyd's players and put that strap over your shoulder and go down the street rocking it. I found another player too that I would actually like.

It was made by Panasonic. It was called the Dynamite Plunger, portable 8-track player. And the reason why is because it had like a, like the handle was like on a rod coming off of it. And then it had like a, well, the thing that you gripped and it looked like kind of a dynamite plunger. It was neat. Came in yellow and all sorts of great colors.

I'm looking it up because I got to see what you're talking about. So yeah, there was one for sale on Etsy. Oh yeah. I've seen those. You've earned those? Yeah, those are rad man, those are awesome. If I got into 8-treks, I would definitely buy one of those,

but I'm not into 8-treks so I'm not going to. Yeah, I mean, there's no reason to. People are into vinyl still because of Fidelity's so great. There's really no reason to buy 8-treks now unless you just want a little walk down memory lane of sort of a credier version of everything else. Right, right. Well, I guess since we started walking down memory lane,

we just walked away from the short stuff, right? Yeah, I guess that means it's out. ["I Heart Radio Theme"] Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.