A Short History of We Make Tapes & Discs

Elvis’ Guitarist started it all in the Music City

We Make Tapes & Discs was originally founded in 1979 (across the street from its current location on Music Row in Nashville, TN) by Elvis Presley’s lead guitarist, Scotty Moore. The company has quite a legacy and is still known around Nashville and elsewhere as just “We Make Tapes”, since that’s what the company mainly did for a couple decades. With the shift to discs accelerating in the 1990’s – and not just in the music business – the company went through two ownership changes until business executives, Sam Paris and his wife Susan, purchased the company in 2002. It’s been CDs, DVDs and tape transfers ever since at We Make Tapes & Discs.

Growth in the Digital Age

Over several years, Sam has invested significantly in state-of-the-art duplicating, printing, finishing & packaging equipment, breathing new life into a company that once only duplicated music tapes. Sam says, “Believe it or not, we still do some tape duplication and repairs. Transfers of video to DVD’s is also a very steady business for us but our primary focus is on duplicating, printing & packaging great looking CDs and DVDs which account for over 99% of our business. Our growth the last few years has been in many industries: music, film, education & self-help, ministries, ad agencies, and businesses nation wide. People say the CD is dead, but even with tremendous growth of online digital content, disc sales continues to significantly increase. I believe CDs and DVDs will be among a multitude of content distribution vehicles for a very long time. Why? Because We Make Tapes & Discs has had double digit growth six out of the last seven years, and as long as we continue to serve our customers to the best of our ability, we can expect that to continue.”