Why not magnetic tapes in stead of vinyl records?

Tape will never surpass vinyl in resolution and signal to noise ratio and dynamic range....Even a top of the line Tandberg Home Reel to Reel. And I don't think people want to spend 1,000 for a 70's tape player. Having said that I still would like to have one to play around with :-) they are fun !

Ghasley makes some excellent points. In addition, I have a nice Akai 4-track tape deck and about 60 prerecorded tapes that I play infrequently. Too much of a PITA for me (and this from a guy who plays mostly vinyl).

The real reasons were pretty simple if you think about it and they were durability and production oriented. You can not mass transfer from tape to tape. To high speed dub from tape to tape, you lose frequency response. Significantly so depending on the speed. Secondly, the vinyl can be mass produced depending on your pressing capacity. For instance, a 45 minute session to replicate 1:1 from tape for maximum fidelity would take 45 minutes....maybe 2:1 would be negligible loss of frequency which would take the transfer to 22.5 minutes. It might take 30 seconds more or less for good vinyl....you can see real quickly that it is simply a matter of economics. The second reason is tapes degrade over time whereas most vinyl is stable indefinitely. Regards.

If you and about 100K other people are willing to spend $500 per album, I think it can be done...

Before cassettes the major labels did release albums in the reel to reel tape, quarter inch format. Today, the vast majority of recordings originate in a digital format so transferring them to analog tape doesn't really make much sense.

Research The Tape Project for limited edition high quality R2R recordings being done now.