The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Strategic decision · 1963–1979
Philips made the cassette a world standard by giving it away for free in 1964.
A tape designed for office dictation was licensed royalty-free by Philips, so rival makers adopted it and it beat every proprietary rival.
Philips
the move
In 1963 Philips, led by engineer Lou Ottens, introduced the Compact Cassette and the EL3300 recorder, aiming at dictation rather than serious music. The 3.15mm tape in a sealed plastic shell was a genuinely new format, not a repackaged reel-to-reel.
Besides its clean ergonomics the decisive move was legal, not technical: in 1964 Philips made the cassette standard royalty-free, publishing exactly what compatible decks and tapes must use for bias, equalisation, frequency response, tape width and head gap.
That let Sony, BASF, TDK and others build the format without waiting or paying. Pre-recorded Musicassettes followed in 1965, Dolby B noise reduction improved the sound, and the Walkman and car stereos turned the cassette into the world's portable music medium.
why it works
- Free licensing removed the cost and the risk for rival manufacturers, so none of them had to back a competing format.
- Publishing the full measurement spec meant every deck and every blank tape inter-operated, which erased the usual fragmentation.
- Being cheap and pocketable made the cassette the portable medium once the Walkman arrived, locking the format into everyday use.
- By giving away the patent Philips traded a licence fee for a position as the format's owner and the default supplier of players.
what transfers
A standard you license for free buys you an entire industry's manufacturing and marketing, and it beats a better format that only you can build.
what came after
The Compact Cassette became the dominant music medium, the basis of the Walkman boom and the most popular format in Britain from 1985 to 1992. Philips' decision to open it is cited as the reason a dictation tape beat every proprietary cassette rival and defined portable music for two decades.
references
- Musicology: The Rise and Fall of the Cassette
- Lou Ottens, the cassette tape's inventor, passed away last week. He left a huge legacy for recorded music
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