Failed Physical Media Formats

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More

Gary Arndt

Education, History

4.7 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For over a century, companies have tried to invent the next great way to listen to music or watch movies. Some became household standards that were the foundation of multi-billion-dollar industries. Others became expensive mistakes, technological dead ends, or punchlines in the history of consumer electronics. Some were so inconsequential that most people never even realized that they existed. Learn more about failed media formats and the battles behind them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors Newspapers.com Honor the past by uncovering its stories at Newspapers.com Promo Code EVERYTHINGEVERWHERE Samsara Don’t wait for the next accident to take action. Head to Samsara.com/EVERYTHING ButcherBox Get your choice between chicken breast or top sirloin for a year OR ground beef for life, PLUS $20 off when you go to ButcherBox.com/everything Quince Go to quince.com/daily for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order! Mint Mobile Save 50% on Unlimited premium wireless plans starting at $15/month at MintMobile.com/EED Audible Listen to Project Hail Mary Audible.com/hailmary Fast Growing Trees Get 20% off your first purchase when using the code DAILY at checkout at fastgrowingtrees.com/daily Subscribe to the podcast! https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Austin Oetken & Cameron Kieffer Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Discord Server: https://discord.gg/Ds7Rx7jvPJ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Disce aliquid novi cotidie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	For over a century, companies have tried to invent the next great way to listen to music or watch movies.
0:05.8	Some became household standards that were the foundation of multi-billion dollar industries.
0:10.6	Others became expensive mistakes, technological dead ends, or punchlines in the history of consumer electronics.
0:17.1	And some were so inconsequential that most people never even realized that they existed.
0:22.9	Learn more about failed physical media realize and support doesn't need
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1:27.3	It's shocking just how many different formats companies have developed for listening to music and watching videos.
1:33.8	Most of the successful formats you know of, as well as a few of the unsuccessful ones.
1:38.9	Yet there were a staggering number of formats developed that ultimately went nowhere.
1:45.2	Some of them were just technologies ahead of their time. Some were too expensive, and others just weren't very good. In fact,
1:51.5	there are so many that I couldn't possibly cover them all. So for the purpose of this episode,
1:56.4	I'm only going to cover media formats for music and video, not computer data storage. That's a separate
2:02.5	thing. Also, the term failed is a bit ambiguous, so I'm not covering anything that was the
2:08.5	dominant media format for any period. That means that vinyl records, real-to-reel tapes,
2:13.9	cassette tapes, VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray will not be included.
2:18.9	So with that, let's get started on one you've probably never heard of.
	...

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