When will 8-Tracks be reinvented?

Answer 1

What has been invented cannot be reinvented.

It is unlikely that 8-tracks will ever be a popular form of music listening device again. While many people who experienced them in their prime are huge fans of the sound reproduction (just shy of that of the LP), they were big and bulky. Technology tends to go toward the minimizing end, and there is just no way to minimize an 8-track tape or player beyond the level they reached in the late '70's and early '80's. Fortunately or unfortunately they are thing of the past.

Assuming you are asking about "8 track tapes" sold to consumers for their listening pleasure and not the recording studio "8 track" the name 8 track is actually a bit decieving. The technology placed 8 mono tracks (4 stereo tracks) across the width of the tape. The tape played in an endless loop with a piece of foil at the loop end (spice) which would signal the playback head to change position to listen to a different stereo pair each time it changed channels. This effectively reduced the amount of tape required for a whole album by approximatly 75%, reducing both the cost to the record companies duplicator and the quality to the consumer by narrowing the width of the magnetic information on the tape. Not that anybody was going to purchase 1/4" reel to reel tapes of albums, the record companies wanted a portable format. (It would be difficult to play a vinyl record in a car) I can only assume that this gave Phillips the idea to narrow the tape and place it into a smaller "cassette" which won the format war in the era. It was however foreshadowing the idea of random access playback that we use today in the form of Laserdiscs, CD's, DVD's, Wave files, and MP3's. (too many computer file formats to list.) It seems we are on a never ending quest for smaller storage space. (how many MP3"s can you fit on your iPod?) Or, (conspiricy theory) how many times can the record company sell you the same music over and over again because your format is obselete?