Cassette Tapes On The Wane

jonerik writes "The BBC has an article on the current status of the once-popular cassette tape in the UK and elsewhere. It's been a long climb up and a long fall down for the audio format introduced by Dutch electronics giant Philips in 1963. Having sold 83 million units in the UK at their 1989 peak, cassettes sold just 900,000 units in the UK last year. And yet the cassette soldiers on in the West in niche applications - particularly in the audio book market - and in other countries where CD and MP3 penetration hasn't been as extensive. From the article: 'Keith Joplin, a Director of Research at the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, said that Turkey still sells 88 million cassettes a year, India 80 million, and that cassettes account for 50% of sales in these countries. In Saudi Arabia, it is 70%.'"

Comments

Re:Naaaa, really?

[Cobralisk]

CDs can be nice, but I'm really sick of losing media to scratches. DVDs doubly so. I still have most of my VHS and audio cassettes from the mid eighties that work fine. Of course, its not like you had to carry a wad of tape to feed into a player, and manually wind it onto spools (most of the time). I'd like just one good reason why optical media has to be handled and exposed to the elements like this.