beatles cassette tape

[nantyboy]

I recently purchased the Beatles album "A Hard Days Night" as a tape cassette. The tape and card insert have a P in a circle on them with the date 1964.

Can anyone tell me if this is an original tape from 1964 (were they available then?) or a if the tape was brought out at a later date? It is an EMI recording.

[scoobysoo]

I didn't think they had audio tapes back then but then I found this on Wickepedia:

Introduction of music cassettes
The mass production of compact audio cassettes began in 1964 in Hanover, Germany. Prerecorded music cassettes (also known as Musicassettes; MC for short) were launched in Europe in late 1965. Musicassettes were introduced to the U.S. in September 1966 by The Mercury Record Company, a U.S. affiliate of Philips. The initial range consisted of 49 titles [1].

However, the system had been initially designed for dictation and portable use, with the audio quality of early players not well suited for music. Some early models also had unreliable mechanical design. In 1971 the introduction of Dolby type B noise reduction and chromium dioxide (CrO2) tape by the Advent Corporation resulted in the format being taken more seriously for musical use.

...so it could well be

[brachiopod]

Your cassette would have been produced at a later date.

The 'P' simply means the date the music was published, not the date of release / production of that tape.

Just grabbing a CD at random, I pick stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material - it carries the dates (P)1979 and �1989. 1979 was when the album first came out (and it definitely wasn't on CD then!), whilst 1989 was the date of copyright (ie release) of that format and catalogue number.

It was subsequently re-released in 2001with bonus tracks, so it bears a different catalogue number and a copyright ( � ) date of 2001, though the publish date is still 1979.