Editing Tape recorder (section)

== Uses ==
[[File:Klaudia Wilde WDR Archiv.jpg|thumb|Klaudia Wilde from the German [[Westdeutscher Rundfunk|WDR]] radio archive with a broadcast tape from 1990. This is a center hub with only a very short length of tape wound round it.]]
[[File:Tape editing.jpg|thumb|Editing magnetic tape]]
Magnetic tape brought about sweeping changes in both radio and the recording industry. Sound could be recorded, erased and re-recorded on the same tape many times, sounds could be duplicated from tape to tape with only minor loss of quality, and recordings could now be very precisely edited by physically cutting the tape and rejoining it. In August 1948, Los Angeles-based Capitol Records became the first recording company to use the new process.<ref>"The Capitol Story – A Decade of Growth and Success." ''Billboard'', 2 August 1952</ref>

Within a few years of the introduction of the first commercial tape recorder, the Ampex 200 model, launched in 1948, the [[History of multitrack recording|invention of the first multitrack tape recorder]], brought about another technical revolution in the recording industry. Tape made possible the first sound recordings totally created by electronic means, opening the way for the bold sonic experiments of the [[Musique Concrète]] school and avant-garde composers like [[Karlheinz Stockhausen]], which in turn led to the innovative [[pop music]] [[Recording studio as an instrument|studio-as-an-instrument]] recordings of artists such as [[Frank Zappa]], [[the Beatles]], and [[the Beach Boys]]. Philips advertised their reel-to-reel recorders as an audial family album and pushed families to purchase these recorders to capture and relive memories forever. But the use for recording music slowly but steadily rose as the main function for the tape recorder.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Bijsterveld |first1=Karin |title=Storing Sound Souvenirs: The Multi-Sited Domestication of the Tape Recorder |date=2009 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt45kf7f.6 |work=Sound Souvenirs |pages=25–42 |editor-last=Bijsterveld |editor-first=Karin |series=Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |isbn=978-90-8964-132-8 |access-date=2022-04-16 |last2=Jacobs |first2=Annelies |jstor=j.ctt45kf7f.6 |editor2-last=van Dijck |editor2-first=José}}</ref>

Tape enabled the radio industry for the first time to pre-record many sections of program content such as advertising, which formerly had to be presented live, and it also enabled the creation and duplication of complex, high-fidelity, long-duration recordings of entire programs. It also, for the first time, allowed broadcasters, regulators and other interested parties to undertake comprehensive logging of radio broadcasts for legislative and commercial purposes, leading to the growth of the modern [[media monitoring]] industry.{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

Innovations, like [[multitrack recording]] and [[tape echo]], enabled radio programs and advertisements to be pre-produced to a level of complexity and sophistication that was previously unattainable and tape also led to significant changes to the pacing of program content, thanks to the introduction of the [[endless tape cartridge]].{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

While they are primarily used for [[sound recording]], tape machines were also important for data storage before the advent of [[floppy disk]]s and [[CD]]s, and are still used today, although primarily to provide [[backup]].{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}