Amateur and home use
DAT was envisaged by proponents as the successor format to analogue audio cassettes in the way that the compact disc was the successor to vinyl-based recordings; however, the technology was never as commercially popular as CD. DAT recorders remained relatively expensive, and commercial recordings were generally not made available on the format. However, DAT was, for a time, popular for making and trading recordings of live music, since available DAT recorders predated affordable CD recorders.
In the U.S., the RIAA and music publishers continued to lobby against DAT, arguing that consumers' ability to make perfect digital copies of music would destroy the market for commercial audio recordings. The opposition to DAT culminated in the passage of the resulting Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, which, among other things, effectively imposed a tax on DAT devices and blank media.
Computer data storage medium
The format was designed for audio use, but through the ISO Digital Data Storage standard it has been adopted for general data storage, storing from 1.3 to 80 GB on a 60 to 180 meter tape depending on the standard and compression. It is sequential-access media and is commonly used for backups. Due to the higher requirements for capacity and integrity in data backups, a computer-grade DAT was introduced, called DDS (Digital Data Storage). Although functionally similar to audio DATs, only a few DDS and DAT drives (in particular, those manufactured by Archive for SGI workstations) are capable of reading the audio data from a DAT cassette. SGI DDS4 drives no longer have audio support; SGI removed the feature due to "lack of demand."
