How many were produced? Who knows. I see no Who or Pink Floyd. No Zappa or Neil Young either. Only one Stones title and nothing from Wings, Beatles et al. No punk or disco. Those tides had receded earlier. For the most part, it looks like we have a good mix between 70's and 80's artists. With a couple of exceptions, most of the 80's titles were mega sellers. If 8-tracks would have lasted only a year longer we may have seen a Guns and Roses cart.

Below is an attempt to list all titles that that came out as Record Club Only (RCO). Remember -- these are titles that were never released to retail stores, only to the tape clubs.. How these titles were chosen remains a mystery. Must have certainly been an Adam Ant aficionado somewhere on that committee!

Other conundrums: no one is sure exactly at what point in time retail tapes were discontinued. They were probably available up through May of 1984 (that's the last month that they were listed in the Schwann Record & Tape Catalog), and many Record Club tapes were released while retail tapes were still being made -- so there is an overlap. 1982-1984 is the transition period where retail tapes slowly disappeared from the shelves and fans of the 8-track relied on tape clubs for purchases up until their final demise in 1988.

And what was the commercial 8-track ever released? Many say that it was Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits, released on November 22, 1988. (Readers' Digest continued to release their Easy Listening 8-track collections through 1989 however).