Digital Audio Tape to Debut in U.S. Market

Digital audio tape is about to punch a hole into the U.S. marketplace, despite lobbying efforts by the major American record companies to keep it out.

Kenwood U.S.A. Corp. announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Friday that it will begin shipments of a DAT player for automobiles in February. Called the KDT-99R, the unit will feature a built-in AM/FM tuner and will have a suggested retail price of $2,000. Clarion Corp. said it also plans to introduce a DAT car stereo sometime in February.

At this point, there’s nothing to play on the machines. Earlier in the week, however, New York-based GRP Records announced that it would become the first American record label to put its music on DAT cassettes in April.

Fear of Counterfeiting

GRP--a small jazz-oriented label that, in 1983, was one of the first to put its music on compact discs--said it initially will release six titles on DAT and plans to have 25 titles available by the end of the year.

The big American record companies so far have refused to put their wealth of music on the new tape, fearing that its ability to perfectly reproduce the sound of compact discs will trigger home taping and counterfeiting resulting in millions of dollars in losses. They also have lobbied Congress to require that an anti-copying device be put in any DAT recorder brought into the country.

No plans have been announced yet to market DAT home units that record as well as play tapes, but industry experts say several companies are preparing to bring machines to the market sometime in the spring.