WhereIsAtlas · Memorex
What Happened to Memorex?
The tape-and-storage giant behind "Is it live or is it Memorex?" — a household name from the cassette era that lives on as a licensed brand.
Memorex was founded in 1961 and became a magnetic-tape and storage brand famous for its "Is it live or is it Memorex?" campaign. The company's heyday was the cassette and floppy-disk era; today the name survives as a licensed consumer label rather than a maker of top-tier storage.
A tape pioneer
Memorex was founded in 1961 in Santa Clara, California, in the heart of what would become Silicon Valley. It made magnetic tape and computer storage products, and by the 1970s it was a leading name in blank audio and video media — the era when a blank cassette or reel of tape was part of everyday recording.
"Is it live or is it Memorex?"
Memorex became a household name through one of the most famous advertising campaigns of the 1970s. The "Is it live or is it Memorex?" tagline suggested the brand's tape reproduced sound so faithfully you could not tell it from a live performance. The ads, featuring Ella Fitzgerald, turned a tape-maker into a cultural icon.
The shift away from tape
As the world moved from cassettes and floppy disks to optical discs, hard drives and the cloud, Memorex lost its core market. The company changed ownership several times, and its consumer products increasingly carried the Memorex name under license rather than as products of an integrated tape company.
Where Memorex is now
Memorex endures primarily as a licensed brand, appearing on consumer electronics and media products. It is no longer the storage giant of the 1970s and 1980s, but the name remains one of the most recognizable relics of the physical-media era — and "Is it live or is it Memorex?" still echoes as a classic of advertising.
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Sources
- Memorex - Wikipedia — Wikipedia (2026-09-05)
- Imation announces close on acquisition of Memcorp assets — ThomasNet/Imation (2026-09-05)