8-track tape is very weird.
The tape is “endless”– it spools around a single reel, and unrolls from the center of the reel. Kinda crazy. A side effect of this is you cannot rewind the tape. There’s a fast-forward, but no rewind. Since the tape is circular, you don’t have to wait for the tape to rewind; once the last song on your track is over, you will already be back at the beginning.
There are 4 (stereo) tracks on a single tape. Each track is considered a “program,” and all 4 programs are playing simultaneously, sort of like having 4 radio stations playing at the same time. Since there is no rewind… if your favorite song on Track 3 is in the same place as your favorite song on Track 4, you’re going to have to do a low of fast-forwarding. My deck has a “program” button on it which switches between tracks/programs.
A “Repeat” button makes the track play over again instead of going to the next track.
There is no “stop” button, nor a “play” button. The closest you get is a “pause” button. The way you start playing a tape is you shove the tape in. The way you stop playing a tape is you yank it out of the player.
So I asked my friend Steve
BRAIN: how do you know where you are in a program?
STEVE: You don’t. You just wait for the song you want to play again. 8-Track is sort of based on you knowing the songs on your tape already.
BRAIN: This sucks!
I’m listening to a tape my grandparents used to listen to.