Ongoing History Daily: Modern 8-track tapes

If you’re old enough, you’ll remember a dead recorded music format called the 8-track tape. Officially, they went out of production in the 80s as everyone moved to cassettes and then CDs. But the 8-track isn’t entirely dead. Some indie artists still think it’s cool to release music this way.

The Melvins, one of Kurt Cobain’s all-time favourite bands, released a limited-edition live album on 8-track. In fact, when Kurt was still alive, he had it his head that Nirvana’s In Utero album should come as an 8-track. Cheap Trick put out one as a kind of a joke in 2009. Then there’s Waves Crashing Piano Chords, an artist who has released multiple albums on 8-track since 2012. And then in 2024, Green Day released an edition of Dookie this way.

These are just stunts and collectors’ items, of course. I mean, when was the last time you saw a working 8-track player?