Why cassette tapes are making a comeback
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- Опубликовано: 20 май 2024
- While vinyl controlled the largest share of the physical music market last year, cassette tapes are surging in popularity. The medium saw an increase in sales from 2015 to 2023 of more than 400%. Marc Masters, author of "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape," joined CBS News to discuss the comeback.
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If someone made a mixtape for you, you were def someone important in their life.
And the feeling of making and then gifting it to that special person 😊
No younger person now days will understand how serious it was to make a mixtape either for yourself or a loved one. You had to first get a stereo that allowed copying. Then you had to get all the correct tapes from your favorite artist. Next you had to find the start of each song on the tape and manually sync up your recording with the track you wanted. All this literally took hours to accomplish and there was a possibility the tape player could get jammed up and ruin a section in your mix tape. It was all very serious.
UNIVERISITY MUSIC IN CT 1990S GOOD TIMES TAPES AND RECORDS
THEN CD CAME ALONG AND THE STORE CLOSED
Exactly why I hated cassettes back in the 80s. The invention of the CD was the greatest thing. Being able to skip to the beginning of each song in seconds was Heaven/Bliss.
The extra work made the mixtape more special and personal. If there were flaws, that also made it more personal.
@@roberteng3567 getting together with friends to copy and share music, borrowing an album so you could tape it... that was fun
Tape to tape?? yuck....
Cassettes were a dream because when I was growing up that is what you recorded on from the radio when a song came on
Nowadays the radio is not worth listening to..... I hate all the morning talk shows, commercials galore - even with the same commercial twice in the same break, news with commercials between every subject and never getting my request played. Nope. Spotify rules.
@@istankimjong-unbutcantstan3398 The music is all programmed now because the stations are no longer independently owned. They are owned by Clear Channel, Sony and BMG. So the so-called DJs are not DJs anymore. They are "on-air personalities." They exist just to talk fluff. This started in 1997. Before that time, you could still call up a radio station and request songs to be played. The best were the quiet storm segments at night where they would air the people calling up to dedicate certain songs to their lovers, ex-lovers and crushes. Those were the days before radio became the corporate oligarchy.
So long the DJ doesn't talk before the song fades,or you hear the station's jingle before the next song being played.
Haha yeah. That was the first cassette tape I ever recorded was songs off the radio. That was way back in 1980 lol. I still have that very tape and all the other tapes I did thereafter.
I have a nice collection of rare N.O.S cassette tapes too. Teac, Sony etc..
Typically we'd buy the record album, then record it to tape and that we the record stayed in mint condition. if the tape got wrecked, then you'd simply record another.
I never bought Store bought tapes because they were almost always recorded poorly on bad quality tapes.
It was a wonderful Era nonetheless.
I can relate to you guys… the DJ keep talking at the song intro right
You buy it, IT IS YOURS until it breaks unlike SONY/Streaming/NETFLIX locking you out of your 1990s car stereo!
and spotify. they stopped some songs
I bought a handful of songs (not a big music person) before 2010 from iTunes and Amazon. All still available for me to stream or download on iPhone (while at least don’t see Apple or Amazon going out of business anytime soon)
Exactly!
So much better than having to find space to store everything. Cassette Tapes are also one of the worst more recent formats music came on when it comes to quality and tapes degrade even if you take care of them. This is a trend that doesn’t make much sense.
@@sixplicit2977 There's a reason it was vinyl that made a comeback, and not the cassette, nor the 8 Track.
I travelled the world with a Walkman and a bunch of cassettes in my backpack back in the 80’s. Those were the days.
I still have all my tapes AND play them on Sunday mornings, usually. Love the sound and the nostalgia to play it on an 80's stereo that works perfectly.
Facts
no ads on my MP3's, cds and mini disks
Mini discs are the best!
I wish my damn DVDs didn't have unskippable ads.
Also your tracks can't be retroactively removed by licensor unlike digital.
@@balsalmalberto8086 That's why get a ton of hard drives. Cassettes and VHS sucks. The way they degraded and were too clunky and difficult to copy for family and friends. I'm not too young or old to forget the nightmare.
You have to have a really great budget for minidiscs these days but I agree - they are amazing. Much more interesting and fun than mp3s or steaming IMO. But I'll take my music any way I can get it. I bought the first MZ-1 when it first came out and later collected discs and machines. Down the rabbit hole we go! ;)
I'm personally drawing the line on 8 tracks coming back😂
Cassettes predate 8 tracks actually. Now reel to reel is where it's at!
8 track sucks!! Muffled mess 🗑️👎
Sorry, sticking with my CD’s.
Bull 💩@@SgtJoeSmith
@@bobd9868yeah and you probably support Trump also CDs are trash the worst
Will this increase the sales of pencils too?
knife blades, nail files, pinky fingers, writing pens and even a tightly rolled up napkin all can do the trick..........
The old clear Bic pen was the perfect fit.
@@jimcabana9309 Exactly! you always had to take up that slack in the tape! or do a total rewind by spinning it around in the air!
I used a pinky finger which is free so IDK but quality comment 😂
👍
Back in the days when I worked at Circuit City, I remember the cassette phased out during the early 2000 . Cassettes are the least expensive devices to produce and replicate. They are also the most popular devices to use for EVP recording. They still work today , better than digital recordings.
For those wondering like me what the hell you are talking about: “Within ghost hunting and parapsychology, electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are sounds found on electronic recordings that are interpreted as spirit voices. Parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive, who popularized the idea in the 1970s, described EVP as typically brief, usually the length of a word or short phrase.”
EVP Recording 😂
@@GladeSwope That's what happens when things go obsolete. Obsolescence is a scam.
The reason is you own it, and it’s yours not like the subscription and cloud nonsense companies want so they can make more money.
I own all my digital MP3s saved on my hard drive. I have never used a subscription or cloud.
They don’t make more money, they make way less nowadays. Subscriptions per month are cheaper than buying just one CD or cassette album.
@@abc33155They are but you don’t really own them. You just rent them. I still do it so I’m not trying to put it down but I also keep my favorites on mp3 so I’ll have them.
@@sci-fi.tsunamiI do both but it is good to keep the favorites because with streaming you pretty much just rent them while you’re subscribed.
I get the argument, never streamed a song in my life other than watching classic videos on RUclips, but why the subpar audio quality and lack of durability of cassettes when CDs exist? Unfathomable to me, who lived through the poor media quality of the late 70s to 80s.
You can buy brand-new cassette players and recorders in Japan.
I'm going to Japan!!!
You can here too (e.g., Fiio, We Are Rewind). Problem is, they all use the same mechanism, so they are all pretty much the same and not all that great. But they are fine starting points for kids who want to get into it, so I’m not gonna hate.
You can still purchase brand new "professional" TASCAM decks in North America.
My old $300 Walkman (with equalizer, TV audio, dual sided playback) broke years ago, and I was able to buy it on eBay for $35 including shipping. Once I got a $3 replacement drive from Norway, I was able to listen to all my old college tapes…brought me back to younger days….
I run a cassette duplication rig for a merch shop and can vouch for these being the go-to for independent musicians; our orders keep increasing
My car only takes cassette tapes (Saturn 99). What shop is it and do you guys do online orders?
@@christiniyoutubesuxyour handle is apt - I tried to reply with a link and the wonderful people at Google censored it 🤐. We do take them online. Google Do-It Now T shirts in Philly
@@christiniyoutubesux They do - search for Do It Now T Shirts in Philly
@@christiniyoutubesux They do - Do It Now T Shirts in Philly
So you pirate music....... hee hee. Movie reference.
I still have my Van Halen's 5150 album in cassette tape bought in 1986. It's nostalgic to see this news.
Let's hope QUALITY stereo cassette recorders start being made again along with decks with DOLBY NR & metal tape bias. Chrome tapes were sooo good.
I agree, I still buy NOS chromies from the 90s. But as for truly high-quality decks, I'm afraid nobody's going to commit to make those anymore.
FACTS...the tdk chrome/ metal tapes. Good sound bass be pumping
I used to buy TDK SA90's by the boat load back in the late 70"s and 80's. I liked Maxells also and I'd buy Fugi tapes on a budget.
I still have my Technics SU-V6X set up with some book shelf speakers, it sounds great with CD's. Would be awesome to add a quality double cassette deck back in to my hifi system.
All you young-uns can go ahead and have fun wit'ch "new" toys. I've been there, done that and own the shirt. The shirt has worn out ages ago, however but I am not goin' back.
Back in the 80's, making a mixtape was a Saturday night if you had nothing else to do. Sunday morning,"hey, what did you do last night?", me"stayed at home, made a great mixtape for the gym". Everyone knew what that meant.
Never died for me have most of mine from the 80's &. 90's. I am 47
I still have a walkman and all my tapes. I also have a cassette deck which plays cds. My generation don't throw stuff away just because something new comes along.
@@lexluthor9509 Quite sure. Beware the Squander Bug was drilled into me as a child. OCD is not the same as being thrifty. They're not organised by artist or anything. 🙂
Still got mine too 🤣 no OCD hear, what people fail to understand is that not artists went to CD or Streaming media
@@lexluthor9509 You are incorrect. I do not blame my behaviour on syndromes. You do you. I like to use stuff until it breaks.
@@phoenixr6811 I love my tapes. I can't afford to replace them all with other media.
Most of my tapes wore out. So did all of my machines, they all died. Had to buy CDs. And then I went through about a dozen portable CD players too LOL, and I thought Napster and MP3 were a god send, being able to play and carry an iPod with all my songs LMAO
My daily driving Tacoma from 2002 has a great sounding tape deck & I have like 100 cassettes that I like...
My 2004 Toyota Sienna has cassette tape player AND CD player…
I listen to tapes all the time in my '99 Miata. They take up less space than CDs in a car where space is very limited, and they sound just fine, plus they're cheap enough where I don't have to worry about what happens to them.
The biggest draw back to cassette tapes aside from sound quality was waiting to fast foward or rewind to your desired song.
i had this hifi system, which nobody believes, the cassette actually has a track skip, repeat everything a cd player does...but it does it in a crude way, say you want to repeat a song, you hit the repeat button, what it does is, after the song is completed it stops and rewinds it back to the start of the track and plays, without knowing the technical side of things my guess is it can detect a blank spot between each song and rewind/fastforward to the next blank spot, works the same way as skipping tracks forward and backward
@@MrQ12elve I had an Alpine cassette deck in one of my vehicles in the 90's that did this, I'm pretty sure your right about detecting the blank between tracks.
Having the Alpine 7618 pull out cassette deck while in high school in 1994 was good times.
Still got my Walkman
Me too 😁
Did you just get it or have you had it for awhile?
I remember that I used my dad's walkman in 2000. as a little girl. It was so cool. I miss those times
#walkmanforever
I kept the box of tapes I had from the '80s. I knew they would eventually come back. Our third car has a casette stereo, so I still get to listen to them📼
I still have a bunch of cassettes from the 80's and they sound great! Best decade ever!
I know it's only 3%, but my bet for the future is on digital downloads. I'm sensing people are becoming uneasy with not owning anything. But at the same time, they don't want the inconvenience of physical.
Personally, as something of a musician myself, I am considering a situation where I release only a portion of my music on streaming platforms and limit the rest to buy-to-own only, in both digital and physical format. I want to reward the people who make a direct contribution to my income the way they deserve and also, well...
I refuse to have streaming platforms cash in on work that I invest literally thousands of dollars into while I get paid spare change.
I'm a Millennial on the youngest end of the spectrum. While cassettes were commonplace when I was born, digital music would come to be the standard during my childhood as well. Initially this meant music downloads, but I eventually moved to streaming as it seems most people have. I had a large library of digital music on my PC but began to question whether I should keep it when everything is available for streaming. I changed my tune (no pun intended) not long ago, after experiencing a number of digital items disappearing from online platforms including Spotify, RUclips, and even video games that I had purchased a digital copy of. I realize now that these "on demand" services are a convenience but not a replacement for a collection. So I decided not only to increase the size of my digital library, but to also start collecting physical media, buying CDs and vinyl from my favourite artists--I haven't purchased any tapes, only because I prefer CDs for the fidelity or vinyl for the album art. I have a fairly large shelf that is full and will continue to grow--while I will acquire digital copies of most of the music I like, I will be sure to acquire physical copies as well for my absolute favourites. Additionally, I purchase physical copies of video games whenever possible now both to avoid a game being bound to a certain account, that game eventually not being downloadable anymore, and because you can eventually sell the game or even just give it to someone else to enjoy which can't be done with digital.
I just said this ! I was born in 94 so I’m 3 years off from a zoomer and now I always thought I was a proper millennial but it seems with a lot of experiences im leaning more elder zoomer these days. I saw cassettes but never really used one irl. By the time I entered kindergarten in 2000, cds reigned supreme. If vhs is bought back I’d totally be on board for that!
All that's old is New again.... glad I held onto my tapes for when I was a teen.. love it...
My Sony Walkman Cassette player from the late 80's still works.
The music industry was once terribly afraid, *_Home_* *_Taping_* *_Is_* *_Killing_* *_Music!_* Instead, it launched the *_cassette_* *_culture_* phenomenon. Many bands that are now super-famous would never have started without it.
Do I remember that or do I remember that? I remember the skull-bones but with the cassette being the skull. I an article remember citing that the one who tape music a lot also had a large record collection. I can vouch for that. I have over a thousand records during the 80s. Even in high School I had quite a few 12" and 45rpm records that I made my "mix-tapes" with. I couldn't play records in my Walkman. I could have bought a portable, battery-operated record player but imagine me walking down the street with a bag loaded with vinyl records and my portable player. Oh how cumbersome. Trying lugging a bunch of groceries home with a portable record player and a bunch of records.
Cassette tapes were the last hold-out. They remained though the 1990s and into the 2000's before they would soon disappear. I haven't the space for physical media and so it's reserved for a very few items.... and playing my music on my phone beats lugging a bunch of cassettes and/or CDs around.
@@GladeSwope most people have no idea how good recordings on a Tascam 4/8-track (for example) can sound in the hands of a meticulous recordist.
I buy and listen to cassettes all the time. It's a less expensive format and you can still support the band. I dig!
I bought some old cassettes in the later 2000s because the music was not available on CDs or iTunes and I had a cassette deck and a CD-r burner so I would burn them and put the music on my iPod.
It's not just big stars that benefit. Garage bands playing in small venues can easily make tapes. With the proliferation of software available for mixing, all they need is a laptop and a tape recorder and they can make a couple dozen tapes at home to give away or sell to their fans. I know, give away? What a concept!
I guess I should keep my old TEAC tape deck.
"from my cold dead hands!"
Like vinyl, it's a warmer sound and no one will change the lyrics.
I've heard the warmer sound argument. I have friends that swear by their tube guitar amplifiers. My ears can't tell the difference; even when I was young I couldn't.
If you mean garbled and wobbly, then yeah LOL
@@ScrewyDriverTheMan You mean because the tapes were stored in a 120 degree car interior, or in a humid garage, for 40+ years. And played on a poor-quality deck that hasn't been maintained. Not a fair argument at all.
No. The tapes were analog. They were never going to be able to replicate digital. Especially the EDM type music I was into already, like Jean-Michel Jarre. I switched to CDs and the difference was amazing
@@ScrewyDriverTheMan Of course tapes are analog, but that's not what you meant when you said "garbled and wobbly". Those words imply tapes & equipment that was either low-quality to begin with, or hadn't been maintained properly.
If you buy an old cassette deck from a thrift store, you need to remember a few things -- It's a mechanical device that needs a lot of maintenance. Not only do you need to clean the heads, but you should get the heads demagnetized to ensure the best audio quality. You can buy a demagnetizer or take it to an electronics repair shop to have them do it. Also, the motors need to be in good shape, and the rubber belt that drives the spools will degrade over time and break. There aren't too many companies around making cassette deck motors, and replacement parts may be very hard to find.
".. take it to an electronics repair shop .."
These damn near do not exist. No one repairs electronics anymore, the ypush for you to buy new stuff. There used to be 3 where I live
Yes, dirty heads can even degrade the quality of a clean tape.
I think it's a crying shame that there are no decent new cassette players made these days. You either have to look hard for a decent old one or just put up with a new one that will play a cassette badly, and then, a couple of months, the player will break.
Using cassette tapes with the right recorder, with mic meters & decent wired attached microphones. The sound is AMAZING!
Yes it is...in the late 1970's I put on cassette tape so many of my LP's somehow they sounded better to me taped
rather then just played on the turntable . Miss my old Sony TC5M
I still got about 300 cassettes LO.L
😂
Me too! 📻😁
I just digitalized all my tapes, I have to find a place that will recycled them
About 1,200 myself
I personally have about 1500 lol
Ah, the cassette tape. They meant the entire world to me. Thankfully, I've saved a lot of them over the years for sentimental reasons. The thrill of going to K-Mart, Tower Records, Sam Goody, etcetera and just browsing the cassette tape section...whew! My grandfather buying me Jodeci's _Come & Talk to Me_ or Hi-Five's _Unconditional Love_ are memories that I'll cherish for the rest of my life. I miss sitting in my room and just staring at the artwork for Janet Jackson's _janet._ or carrying Mary J. Blige's _What the 411?_ in my lil' purple fanny pack. Cassette singles were my favorites because I could buy an unlimited amount of them. As the mid '90s emerged, I started buying cassettes, CDs, imports and maxi-singles. My dad couldn't quite understand why I needed Nasir's _Illmatic_ on cassette and CD. Finding European import singles w/ b-sides and rare remixes was the best. Erykah Badu and Mariah Carey had the best imports. Oooh, I need to find my lil' Sony walkman again. See, for me, it's not just music. It's life. I can go on and on for days about this so Imma just leave it here.
A real cassette "revival" for me would be manufacturers making Hi-bias blank tapes (type II and IV) and higher quality recording and playback decks and of course, the pre-recorded tapes with type II & type IV tape stock compatible to CD and vinyl quality sound.
NAC in Missouri is making cobalt-based type II’s, though they’re arguably not as hifi as the older formulas (which can no longer be made due to environmental restrictions). Hopefully they continue to improve the formula for the new ones.
@@ericvannielsen Personally I just buy NOS chromes from the late 80s and early 90s
They're already making Type II but not up to the quality of new old stock tapes! Forget new Type IV metal tapes, very likely not going to happen due to environmental restrictions on the materials used!!!
Perhaps DATs should make a comeback, although they never really were for commercial use like cassettes but the sound quality would be like high-quality cassettes and CDs and they were much smaller than cassettes and the player could be about the size of an iPod.
Nostalgia of my teens and twenties.
Definitely miss the cassette tape era.
Reminding me of the days of the mixed tape.
Got your tape, and it changed my mind….
Cassettes are awesome! Cassette tapes overtook vinyl records in 1984, making up almost 53% of all album products shipped to trade that year, up 30.1% from the previous year. Cassettes remained the dominant format in the United States and the UK until 1992, when CDs took over.
In the USA, cassettes made it into the early 2000s. I bought mainly cassettes in the early to mid 1990s.
My parents ( well my mother now ) have hundreds of cassette tapes. Growing up we listined to them, some sounded better than CDs of of today. My mom still has her 1985 Boom Box ( as she calls it ).
Also referred to as ghetto blaster.
@@mattdonna9677 ... I think so.
Well I still have some blank cassettes in the wrapping. Let’s roll. 😮😂
Did not think the manufacturer were still making tapes.
Every major artist and record label is putting out cassettes.
@@tturner12341 thanks for the info, it was new info to me. I worked in the electronics field at a nation wide retailer until their 2017 bankruptcy. After around 2013-14 we no longer had suppliers for the blank tapes or the equipment to play or record. I still have my tape deck hidden away somewhere in the house.
Physical is the wrong word. Mechanical is correct, and computer hard drives with spinning discs and CDROMs are included in that. Computer hard drives and CDROMs are digital. So they are in two categories. There are digital audio tapes as well as analogue. Analogue tapes include the cassettes in this video. But there are 8 track and reel to reel analogues as well.
It's the analogue medium that's making a comeback. I won't be at all surprised to see reel to reel make a comeback too. I can't imagine 8 tracks coming back. But hey, who knows?
As a kid, I used to record short sci-fi horror monster movie stories on cassette tapes for fun and I'd provide the voices, monster noises, and pre-recorded sound effects for some home-made enjoyment. :)
I still have about 400 cassettes with no way to play them
Come by. You can use my cassette deck.
Sell them for a grand !
Pawn shops................
Oh boy, I still have my cassette tapes from the 70s and 80s. They have literally followed me around the world. 2:15
I worked in a record shop got lots of cassettes still also promo ones from labels same with albums Like seeing others enjoyed recording off the radio waiting for favorite songs to come on ❤
What about compact discs? Unlike magnetic cassette tape, CDs I bought almost 40 years ago play just as well today as when I bought them, yet today’s laptop computers do not come with a CD or DVD burner. Companies have gotten wise to having you buy something that’s not really yours, and if you give up a music subscription, say goodbye to the music you purchased.
As a CBC radio fan who has listened to a considerable classic music and commentaries by knowledgeable presenters through the years, having taped such programs has allowed me to appreciate classical music. At times I have listened again to my tapes and have learned a lot. Recording conversations in foreign languages is also a great way to train one’s listening ability. Cassette tapes definitely have a place for those of us who are attentive to detail. Food for the mind as well.
They laughed at me for keeping my Betamax. Well who is laughing now.
No I'm still laughing! My god move onto Blu Ray and 4K discs dude!
LOL! I still have a single VHS tape of my favorite movie from the '80s. I'm quite sure it wouldn't play even if I had a VCR as I live in a very arid climate that destroys everything, but I can't prove nor disprove that, so it will continue to sit in a drawer until I know for sure.
Amazon mistakenly shut my account and wont fix it, do I've lost 20 years of ebooks, audiobooks, music, videos, and my cloud storage and web storage and developer space, and my merch accounts. Im never trusting online anything ever again. They flat out stole my $350 gift card balance too.
I'm already deep into buying new albums on vinyl and making myself mix tapes.
By the way, blank tape has never left. Its always been a ailable in pharmacies, and its good quality Normal Bias tape.
I never completely gave up my CDs in all honesty. In fact mine has been growing a bit because I just CAN'T F**KING stand Spotify or any other subscription based service. To me even the word "subscription" has become a hotly hated word for me. Like FEE or PREMIUM, how about UP YOURS... And I say that as a Millennial too...
Exactly! I don't wanna pay for only some digital download, (besides you can rip anything free) If i don't get a physical disc and book with it i don't bother. And there's now only ONE chain of retail outlets in Australia where you can get CD's these days ALL department stores STOPPED selling them down here. But the stupid thing is they sometimes still sell stone age LP records that cost between $80 to $100 why the hell would you buy these old scratchy popping sounding things is beyond me.
Agreed, I grew up with cassettes tapes and CDs 💿 I’m 34 years old
The compact cassette format that Philips introduced in 1963 is the technology that truly brought recorded music to the masses. Sturdy, portable and cheap, it really was revolutionary. Its popularity really exploded around 1980 with the introduction of the Sony Walkman. My first ever compact cassette album that I purchased was ZENYATTA MONDATTA by The Police in 1980 !
There are no ads on tapes!! And the audio quality last longer.
I remember as a teenager, recording all kinds of BS, on my tape recorder, with songs and stuff, for my ex lmao
Ditched cassette tape in the early 90's and went to Minidisc. Still have the players and hundreds of discs but never use them anymore. I'd never go back to tape.
Minidisc was such a wasted opportunity!
Now we're talking... Im glad the 80s still have a big influence on certain things
Cassettes captures the stereo, and surround sound so much better.
My Sony FH-7 MK II Hifi sounds amazing still after 41 years.
I got my first car in 1973 and immediately installed a cassette player (they only had radios back then). But I never bought a pre-recorded cassette. I would buy the LP and record cassettes for my car. Because of that I still have 30 feet of LPs in excellent condition. Since cassettes last less than a decade, if I had bought cassettes I would have lost all my music.
A friend of mine bought a new truck that didn't even have a radio in it. That was in the late 80s. Pre-recorded cassettes were crap until the 1990s. The ones I remember never had all the linear notes that records had. They only had the insert with the picture showing the artist and album title, the spine with the album title and artist and the song titles on the back fold. The reverse of the insert was blank. No producer credits, no lyrics, nothing. In the 90s, that is when the insert became a multi-panel foldout, clear cases so there can be artwork in the back as well. The cassettes were even in better quality and some were in high-bias as my portable player had high-bias settings. This is why I bought mostly cassettes in the 1990s.
I own a record,tape and CD store and this is a true statement.We sell tons of these.Vinyl is #1 then cassettes are 2nd.CDs are a distant 3rd.
We didn't only listen to music, we collected it, traded it. I even remembered trading double up iron maiden tapes for the latest airwalk skateboard boots early 90s off a kid at school. They were like currency before we had jobs at a young age.
Now songs are a file on a phone which you don't own.
I like owning music, tapes, cds, lp etc. You feel like part of the band in a way buy owning a collection of their art.
So essentially you are collecting physical audio art.
I remember buying an album purely because of the art, never heard the band before. Pre 2000s were awesome in this regard.
Im glad I grew up in the tape and vinyl era
It's weird because sci-fi in the 90s was fairly prescient in many aspects, but we thought physical media would survive well into the future and somehow couldn't imagine anything like the complete domination of streaming services, or even digital storage. Something like digital lag. The computers in Minority Report had motion-controlled holographic user interfaces, but the videos for all future-crimes were stored on their own separate disk or cassette or whatever you want to call what they were using. That movie was released in 2002, a year after the first I-Pod. We already had the tech but we knew what we liked and thought since we liked it so much, it would always be. But it didn't last, like nothing does. The internet became huge way faster than most people could anticipate, and now we are stuck renting our media from month to month, with a near-infinite amount of choices. But nothing is personal anymore. Nothing is precious. My VHS (cassette) collection was replaced by my DVD (CD) collection which was replaced by...(the sound of wind through dry bare branches ready to burn and turn to ash). Now we have people of all generations trying to make something be a little bit like it was before, when the music we physically owned sounded different not just because of the tape hiss and analog warmth, but also because by either purchasing or taping this music we made it ours. That's a feeling that no streaming service can ever replicate.
And to think since I first heard that it would be difficult to buy cassettes back in the day I hoarded hundreds of them as I still use them. When I was a club dj starting in '84 I recorded every night I spun, and stored over 700 cassettes as I still get people asking me for a mix tape from a certain time period. I stopped in '94 as I wanted my nights back so I could relax, but those were the best years of my life
I love my cassettes. I taped off the radio some wonderful music. The only two problems are 1) they outlive the tape deck you play them on and 2) the players devour the tape. 😁
When I was in grade school it was LP (vinyl) and 8-track; we had an 8-track player in our Chevy van and listened to them on car trips, Dad had a recorder to make mix tapes. Cassettes started showing up when I was in junior high, and Dad finally broke down and put a cassette player in the van. In high school, I became a fan of old-time radio shows, and by the time I graduated college, I had a huge collection. I bought very few cds except for music. Although I went digital for OTR, I kept a few of my first cassettes and still listen to them every once in a while.
Nostalgia is the most powerful of human emotions.
There's a generation now who don't own any media. That's the thing. Three things going on here, Nostalgia, Novelty (be it those who are too young to have owned a cassette, people saw it in a recent movie or as they touch on here cheap merch) and the people who gravitated away from physical media starting to realise that physical media will always be more practical than digital (because you actually own something or whatever)
Record labels need to get on board and either heavily promote tape, yeah it's a copyright nightmare medium but people buying albums on cassette actually want the art work and everything not a copy)
I still have lots of records that are decades old, but I got rid of all my cassette tapes. They were a pain with the tape getting stuck in the machine all the time!
I'm still buying them.
Yeah the Compact Cassette! One of the fantastic inventions (just like the Compact Disc) of the Dutch Philips company...😉👍🏼
The exciting part is going to the music store, opening the cassette case and listening to it in the car even before playing it at home. And collecting them.
Tapes are dope. The current problem is finding a good quality, affordable tape deck.
Exactly, modern players are junk
The mini disc was the best format
The thing? It's called a cassette player.
The last time I heard the words High Bias, I did not have Internet access
Still got lots of cassettes and a cassette player.
I still have a ton of cassettes. Lots of metal and hard rock.
Wow ! I have hundreds of them especially the ones with music
Lol wtf
It's even more convenient if your tape deck has auto-reverse
Tapes are tough and can take a beating. I'll find myself listening to the full album of an artist because
I'm too lazy to pop it out.
Now waiting to bring back 35MM film with real conventional cameras. I miss the film processing in stores and the protection of the pictures by physically having them in my hands or in photo books.
I still have about 200 music cassettes. I got rid of my vinyl records but kept my cassettes. The Chrome tapes sound better than vinyl in my opinion.
They were comparable even to CDs in the 1990s.
It's even more convenient if your tape deck has auto-reverse.
I used to love tapes and enjoyed them for years , but no more tapes or vinyl for me , not worth it.
The glue that adheres the iron oxide to the tape transfers to the rollers. It's inevitable that, even with cleaning, eventually all cassette tapes will fail. Even if it doesn't get demolished by the player, the material will flake off and you'll have a tape that has snap, crackle and pop included. Also, the tape will stretch. Another problem is reverse side bleed over.
Thank you! Someone that remembers. They were a catastrophe. I don't miss them and they're a waste of resources too. Never turning back from my trusty MP3s and digital video. I would have killed to have an MP3 player and a Smartphone in High School. These kids have no clue how good their tech is.
I’ll never go back to tapes. They aren’t long lasting and you can’t skip tracks. Duplicating one takes forever. I burned all my audio media to data disks as backup and have it all stored on a hard drive. My mp3 player works just fine and is super compact. No streaming service can say no to my mp3 player. It’s got no internet connection.
Tapes have that warm lofi sound that we love.
They do! 👍
I'm still listen to my cassettes them in my 1993 Grand Marquis 😁
I still have some tapes as well as CDs. Digital purchases can block you from enjoying what you pay for. I bought a song that no longer is available on my iPhone but still plays on my iMac
So that means vhs tapes are coming back also
Are you serious! I remember my cassette player eating up my tapes from time to time. 😭
Brings back old memories
Funny, I started to sell cassettes on tour in 2015... and everyone was amazed... all the artists I met in each city said they wanted to do it. Looks like they did.
I still have my 500+ CD collection and over 17,000 handpicked songs physically on my phone and on my PC. I'm never going back to listening to music on cassette tapes. Hells no.