Cassette tape

The cassette tape, officially named the Compact Cassette, and also known as audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens and his team at the Dutch company Philips, the Compact Cassette was introduced in August 1963, and Philips freely licensed the patented format to other manufacturers from 1966.

Cassette tapes come in two forms, either containing content as a pre-recorded cassette (such as a Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms have two sides and are reversible by the user. Although other tape cassette formats have also existed—for example the Microcassette—the generic term cassette tape is normally used to refer to the Compact Cassette because of its ubiquity.

The Compact Cassette format was initially developed for dictation purposes. When Dolby B noise-reduction technology started to become commonplace in the mid-1970s, reducing tape hiss, the cassette became suitable for high fidelity audio, leading to it being widely adopted by the music industry. From 1983 to 1991, the cassette tape was the most popular audio format for new music sales in the United States.