New Note in Music

The home tape recorder, up to now a gadget used chiefly by hobbyists and high-fidelity fans, is becoming a full-fledged challenger of the record business. RCA Victor has just put on sale its first reels of music on tape. The 17 tape recordings range from Brahms to Gershwin, play about as long as a 12-in. LP record, and sell for $11 to $15 (v. $4 to $6 for comparable disk records).

RCA is following the lead of Webster-Chicago and smaller companies, which have already brought out music on tape.

Capitol and Decca are also getting set to sell music on tape, and Muzak is busily converting all its disks to tape. Columbia is going into production of its first tape recorder and Bell Sound Systems is bringing out a popular-priced ($29.95) tape playback to plug into phonograph systems. The demand for tape has grown so fast that the biggest U.S. producer, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co., announced last week that it has doubled production facilities in the last six months.

Sales of tape recorders and tape are expected to reach $120.6 million this year, up from $74.7 million last year.

Mass Production. This boom in prerecorded tape was made possible by Redwood City, Calif.'s Ampex Corp., which makes duplicating machines for RCA, Victor, Webster-Chicago and others. Now Ampex has perfected a new machine that will make 320 tape recordings in the time it formerly took to make one. Originally, tapes had to be duplicated a few at a time and at playing speed, making them too expensive for most home-music fans.

The growth of Ampex is a prime example of the growth of the tape-recorder business. Ampex was founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff, 62, who was born in Kazan, Russia, trained in Germany to be an engineer, and came to the U.S. in 1927, where he got a job with General Electric. During World War II, he started Ampex to make electronic equipment for the Navy, began building tape recorders at war's end.

Now Ampex is supplying automatic recording equipment for radio stations and the Government's guided-missile program. Ampex has helped develop other uses for tape, e.g., industrial music for factories, teaching school, recording TV images, sound for movies and earthquakes. For all these activities, Ampex now has more than 550 employees, and expects to gross $6,500,000 this year.

Higher-Fi. In company with its competitors, Ampex is also bringing down the cost of home recorders, has put out a $545 model this year. Magnecord. another top-quality builder of recorders, is bringing out a new low-cost model at $300.

No one expects pre-recorded tape soon to take the place of all disk recordings. It is not practical for short, popular tunes. But for classical music, tape has unbeatable advantages over a disk: it can record sound more faithfully, does not wear out, has no needle scratch.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.