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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%.'"
Audio books have all seemed to be switching over to CD-ROM, but it makes me sad. I don't really care about ultra-high fidelity when being read a book. What I do care about is not having it lose my place when I have to stop the car, etc. I rarely stop on a chapter boundary. And it's rare for audio players to remember the CD's their position well under all the circumstances they need to in order to make Audio Books on CD really work.
So I don't doubt there's been a decline in cassette audio books even--it's obvious at the stores. But I think it's premature, at least for that genre.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
A friend and i were just discussing the mix tapes of our youth the other day. When you'd strive to make sure the song was cut in EXACTLY. How you'd try to fill to the exact end of the tape. How you could fill in with sound effects from tv shows. Waiting for hours for your favorite song to come on the radio, then carefully editing around the dj chatter. Giving or recieving a mixtape as a gift really MEANT something.
CD's are just too easy, a few minutes on P2P or the iTunes store, and you're done. You kids don't know how good you got it! We had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to the tape recorder, and.....
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
http://hellebore.aa.stodge.org/episode8.html This guy makes an art-form out of purposefully discarding casettes full of strange and alarming music; He calls what he does tape-dropping, and while technically the same thing can be done with CDs, he appreciates the rough-seedy aspect of casette-tapes.