October 6th, 2009 – After World War II, Americans began to reverse engineer the highly advanced magnetic tape technology the Germans possessed. When Bing Crosby realized that recording on tape would allow him to continue putting on a new show everyday but pre-recording them so he could have days off, he invested $50,000.00 in Ampex, the company that was working on the technology at the time.

When Ampex released the Ampex 200, he gave one to his friend Les Paul. Les Paul used this recorder to invent the concept of multi-track recording. So you see, artists are always the front runners of new technology.

Bing Crosby Wikipedia page