Cassettes Are Back, and Booming (fastcompany.com)

Long time reader harrymcc writes: By now, it isn't news that vinyl albums continue to sell, even in the Spotify era. But a new report says that sales of music on cassette are up 140 percent. The antiquated format is being embraced by everyone from indie musicians to Eminem and Justin Bieber. Fast Company's John Paul Titlow took a look at tape's unexpected revival, and why it's not solely about retro hipsterism.

Comments

It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[sjbe]

The antiquated format is being embraced by everyone from indie musicians to Eminem and Justin Bieber. Fast Company's John Paul Titlow took a look at tape's unexpected revival, and why it's not solely about retro hipsterism.

There is no reason to use tape aside from "retro hipsterism". (isn't that redundant?) Tape sucks on SO many levels. Anyone who thinks it doesn't isn't old enough to have had to live with tapes. I can see it being kind of novel to someone once or twice but the charm will wear off fast. Seriously, tape has some use cases but playing music shouldn't be one of them. We used it back in the day because there wasn't anything better available.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[SkaNubbin]

Unless perhaps you have a old car with no CD or Aux In. I have a dozen cassettes I used to keep around for when I borrow the in-laws truck. 140% increase isn't that hard to achieve when the volume is nil. We've sold 7 units compared to 3 last year, woohoo!!!

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[green1]

That's why you keep a cassette adapter around, not an actual cassette.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, it's not a complete explanation.

I'm an indy musician.

I don't have a lot of cash, and I don't have a lot of sales.

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

Cassette audio fidelity (or lack thereof) is a fine match for my typical output.

And for people who want digital fidelity, I include a slip of paper with a download code.

But yes, from a marketing and artistic standpoint, having a physical product on offer for those who want it is important, and no, streaming and digital downloads alone don't satisfy that need.

Yes, I was around for cassettes the first time. I was around before CDs. I know all the arguments, and have lived through them. Your casual dismissal is just incorrect.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[ChronoReverse]

Doesn't a CD-R cost like 50 cents? Is recording a cassette really cheaper than burning a CD?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the metal tapes, record loud and use the dolby for Record AND playback.

It will sound pretty good.

The metal tapes add some of the missing dynamic range back.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[ZorinLynx]

Oh gods this is so true.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and cassettes were my main music format at the time.

The hiss. The tape becoming damaged now and then resulting in parts of your songs being screwed up. The poor speed regulation on many tape decks. The felt pad under the tape becoming damaged or falling out and having to replace it, hoping not to damage the tape in the process. The tape getting "eaten" by the deck. The fact that almost all prerecorded tapes were made with the lowest quality tape possible (low bias, non-metal), so you didn't even get the best quality tape could provided from your music purchases.

Heck, the technology itself was a hack. Cassettes were originally meant for low fidelity voice dictation.

Cassettes have literally NOTHING to offer except the nostalgia. If you want a physical copy of your music, CDs are the way to go. If you want to be retro-hipster, vinyl is far better in audio quality and durability. Tapes are a clusterfuck and I remember RELISHING the day I got a CD player and didn't have to deal with them for my new music purchases.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[dejitaru]

Technically yes if you are recording live to a cassette, because you just need a tape deck and a microphone. With CDs, you still need a computer, software to record the audio, etc.

Now with that being said, he said he also includes a "download code", hence he recorded it to a computer and uploaded, so I have no idea why he would go the tape route unless he wanted to appear retro-cool

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[MightyYar]

This has to be a troll.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

so my 60 year old dad, who tapes shit from spotify directly to tape so he can listen in his car, is a hipster, i got to tell you, i always knew those suspenders he uses are kinda weird

now it all makes sense

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Comboman]

Cassettes are reusable, CD-Rs are not. CD-RWs are reusable, but they don't work in many CD players (big quality/tolerance difference between a CD-audio player and a CD-ROM drive).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[hawguy]

Sorry, it's not a complete explanation.

I'm an indy musician.

I don't have a lot of cash, and I don't have a lot of sales.

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

Cassette audio fidelity (or lack thereof) is a fine match for my typical output.

And for people who want digital fidelity, I include a slip of paper with a download code.

But yes, from a marketing and artistic standpoint, having a physical product on offer for those who want it is important, and no, streaming and digital downloads alone don't satisfy that need.

Yes, I was around for cassettes the first time. I was around before CDs. I know all the arguments, and have lived through them. Your casual dismissal is just incorrect.

You can get 100 CD's (printed disks in jewel case) for $139 does anyone do small cassette runs for less than $1.39/piece?

Blank CD-R's are 10 - 20 cents a piece in bulk if you have a very small run and want to record your own.

And more importantly, how do you find fans that still own cassette players? I don't even own a CD player anymore, all my disks get copied digitally, then they get packed away in a big CD wallet, never to be seen again. The last time I bought music from a small indie band, they emailed me a link where I could download it.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[avandesande]

You can probably buy an old laptop with burner for 50$

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Sperbels]

Old computers are practically free, I throw away a couple every year. Tape decks are so antiquated they actually cost money because they're becoming more scarce.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[kriston]

I would agree, since I also lived through this horror, but the most expensive metal tapes with Dolby C processing sound almost like live audio. Seriously.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

There is no reason to use tape aside from "retro hipsterism". (isn't that redundant?) Tape sucks on SO many levels. Anyone who thinks it doesn't isn't old enough to have had to live with tapes. I can see it being kind of novel to someone once or twice but the charm will wear off fast. Seriously, tape has some use cases but playing music shouldn't be one of them. We used it back in the day because there wasn't anything better available.

Yep. Back in the days before CDs, I only bought tapes if I had no choice - something went out of print on vinyl and was only available on tape. I've got a small number of old commercial cassettes sold by various music companies. These are real legitimate releases, not bootlegs. Some have long been completely unplayable. I've got a somewhat larger number of cassette tapes I made myself in that era. They all still work, although I rarely do anything with them. Commercial cassette quality was known to be awful. Maybe if you were lucky they used Dolby B noise reduction which helped the sound suck less, but on home cassette recorders you could use the superior Dolby C. And worse, manufacturers didn't always tell if they used Dolby B when they did, so all you could do was play the tape and try to figure out if it sounded better with it on or off. Vinyl had a lot of problems, mostly because the US industry used really cheap and low quality vinyl at the time, but cassettes were pretty much always crap. I have no idea why anybody would want to buy these by choice nor how a young person could even find a player. I've got a player I almost never use, but I bought it more than 20 years ago.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[crgrace]

But how many people have cassette player? Unless you're marketing exclusively to hipsters or my parents, good luck finding people with cassette playback capability.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[fbobraga]

a troll submit: exactly what a think of

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

CD-Rs cheaper
File downloads are much cheaper
You fail at haiku.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[fbobraga]

phones can record digital audio, and it's very cheaper (to copy and distribute)

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[amicusNYCL]

"It's nice to only be able to listen to what's in front of you, instead of having the entirety of music at your fingertips with Spotify and all that"

Right, and when I go to lunch I prefer to go to the convenience store where I only have the pre-made sandwiches in the cooler to choose from. That's also "nice". When I can pick from anything I want I just get confused. I prefer it when my choices are today's ham and swiss or yesterday's ham and swiss. Sometimes I pick yesterday's ham and swiss because I appreciate the retro taste of it, I like that the bread just feels warm and fuzzy (where it isn't soggy). I also avoid online dating, when I want a date I go to the closest cheap bar and think it's nice that I'm only able to pick from the selection of women at the bar, I appreciate their retro ages. Sometimes I pick the one without a disease, but I always appreciate a retro penicillin shot.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[MightyYar]

You are worried that people might not be able to play a CD-RW, but you seem unconcerned that people need a find a working tape deck?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Tough Love]

Only to someone who can't hear high frequencies.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[MightyYar]

Let me know when your dad buys a new prerecorded album at all, let alone on cassette. I don't think this story is about your dad.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[MightyYar]

Just make sure you pre-screen the source and set your levels! :)

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[phantomfive]

Cassettes are reusable

No, I break the tabs out of mine. Protected fully by the DMCA.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Doesn't a CD-R cost like 50 cents? Is recording a cassette really cheaper than burning a CD?

Oh god no, they're waaaaaaaay less than that:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=n...

600 discs for $83 is 0.13 per disc and there are lots of similar deals.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[MightyYar]

3M makes a variety of copyright circumvention adhesive tapes.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Luthair]

If I recall correctly CDs have something like 7-8 copies of the data and has error correction.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Luthair]

It didn't stop vinyl from coming back when it is objectively a worse format than a CD.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Luthair]

Why not buy a CD deck for $30 new, or probably $5 at a garage sale. The new ones even have bluetooth at that price point.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[sound vision]

But if you have the new iPhone, you won't be able to plug in the adapter either.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[the_Bionic_lemming]

A piece of wadded up paper towel, and some scotch tape and it's writable again...

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[sconeu]

BFD. Try to RTFA. It's kind of hard to sell phone recorded audio to fans.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Khyber]

Those rarely worked properly and loved to fuck up the tape loading/eject mechanism.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[phantomfive]

Is there a tutorial available?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Zalbik]

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

Where the heck are you getting your cassette tapes produced?

The article indicates small runs cost around $2/unit. That's around the same price I've seen online.

I can get CD's produced for as low as $0.50/unit.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[MightyYar]

Yes - my instructor was a 10 year old boy at school. Talk to Dale.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Miamicanes]

Why, on ${deity}'s green earth, would you *ever* do something as completely insane as make your SOURCE recording on tape today?!?

Cassettes had their place back before CD-R became cheap and universal (with high-quality metal tape & dbx, you could get about 85% of cd quality), but cassette audio really, truly, has no reason to exist anymore as a format for new content. Records have some lingering value by virtue of being random-access & allowing you to see the layout visually (though modern faux-turntables have basically matched that capability with CDs & digital formats), but cassettes have LITERALLY no redeeming value today. And I say that as an audiophile who owned & used everything from a 1974 Panasonic cassette recorder and1981 walkman all the way up to Technics, Yamaha, and Denon component decks. It's hard to think of anything tape doesn't suck at more than any conceivable alternative.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[hawguy]

BFD. Try to RTFA. It's kind of hard to sell phone recorded audio to fans.

I read TFA, but I didn't see anything there about selling phone recorded audio to fans. Just some handwaving about "listening to vinyl or cassettes pulls us out of the digital ocean for 45 minutes or so and forces us to focus on one thing", and I can't figure out how that's different than just playing an album at a time digitally.

The grandparent poster complained that a computer is too expensive to use to record audio, so the parent suggested using a phone, assuming that most people these days have phones. You can even get high quality USB mics that work with many phones.

Then the artist can sell audio by email, or on cheap $2 flash drives, or whatever.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[StatureOfLiberty]

If you used good tape and a quality cassette deck the high frequencies were fabulous.
A good type II tape like Maxell UD-XLII or TDK-SA made amazing recordings.
I had a Teac C3-RX which was one of their higher end decks. The tapes still sound amazingly good.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[green1]

If you have a new iPhone, then you're probably in that same hipster category in the first place.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[green1]

In my experience they were much less likely to damage the mechanism than the tapes themselves that had a tendency to spew long lengths of tape throughout the mechanism at random intervals.
as for "working properly", I always managed to hear what I played through them quite clearly, and usually with better sound quality than an actual tape. I never saw any downside.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[The Grim Reefer]

Maybe if you were lucky they used Dolby B noise reduction which helped the sound suck less, but on home cassette recorders you could use the superior Dolby C. And worse, manufacturers didn't always tell if they used Dolby B when they did, so all you could do was play the tape and try to figure out if it sounded better with it on or off.

I actually still have my tape deck. I recently redid my theater room and had room on the AV cart, so I hooked up my VCR and tape deck. I haven't used either, but I figured it couldn't hurt. Anyhow, my tape deck has Dolby B, C, and S. Dolby S was better than B or C. But on my deck you only needed to set those for recording. It auto-selected the appropriate one for all playback.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[PopeRatzo]

Technically yes if you are recording live to a cassette, because you just need a tape deck and a microphone. With CDs, you still need a computer, software to record the audio, etc.

Oh man. Buy a cheap USB interface for your computer. Get a copy (free, full version, not limited in any way) of Cockos Reaper. You'll never look back. For $50, you can get something that has a decent mic preamp and you'll be able to multitrack like Sgt Pepper.

Go to Guitar Center when they have a sale or look on Amazon. Then, you get a free account at Soundcloud and you'll be able to distribute your music without having to use any physical media at all.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[sethaw]

You can get a Bluetooth Casette Adapter https://www.amazon.com/ION-Aud...

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Immerman]

What? Did you mean
> I am at a loss as to how people are supposed to get better fidelity than from digital downloads

I mean it's easy to get better fidelity from digital downloads - even with modern variable bitrate mp3s you can easily crank up the fidelity past what's achievable for CDs (assuming you don't mind if only some players can handle it, and that you didn't start from CD, in which case obviously the quality can only go downhill). And of course CDs have gotten a bad name due to the growth or horrible editing practices that make music sound louder (good for listening to in-store samples) at the expense of discarding half or more of the available fidelity.

And of course *any* digital format, but especially the "just good enough" formats that have become popular, are going to have noticeable quantization noise, but assuming you're not in the habit of listening to massive professional editing-grade recordings on comparably good replay hardware, then It all comes down to what kind of noise you prefer. Analog recordings will tend to capture the subtleties of the original sound more accurately, but also introduce lots of analog noise which can't be removed without introducing distortion. And of course they will degrade with time and use.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Immerman]

But what does that have to do with recording something at a decent quality?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[The Grim Reefer]

The metal tapes add some of the missing dynamic range back.

Some, but not much. I think prerecorded tapes cut off around 13 kHz and metal cut off around 15kHz. I don't remember what the bottom end was. CD has a frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[wbr1]

Just to list a few reasons tapes suck:

Limited frequency range
Limited dynamic range
Extremely slow random access seek times
High noise levels
Physical space sink/clutter
Relatively short life/easily damaged

This is hipster tripe....

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[chispito]

Those rarely worked properly and loved to fuck up the tape loading/eject mechanism.

Always worked fine for me. The only failures I ever encountered were in the too-thin cord.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[chispito]

I don't have a lot of cash, and I don't have a lot of sales.

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

Perhaps you'd make more money if your fans didn't need to own a cassette player.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Bartles]

If an artist wants to present a story to the listener rather than a collection of paragraphs, there most certainly is a reason to use something like a cassette or a record.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[arth1]

In which case you can purchase a cassette adapter that makes it an aux in, and still skip the tapes.

They don't work with all players. On some, if the flap can't close after the cassette is inserted, it will try to eject the cassette again.
And some have capstan tighteners, and will reject the tape as stuck/broken if the passive roller doesn't roll with the active one.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Bartles]

When you record an album, do you pay attention to the order and manner the individual tracks are recorded to the media? Do you try to craft it as a story that should be taken as a whole rather than a random collection of tracks? If so, score one for the cassette over a cd.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Rick Schumann]

I actually begin to wonder if all this 'retro hipsterism' is just a symptom of people's brains being overwhelmed by so much high-tech, information overload, and a desire to 'simplify' things. Also, there's one thing analog tape can do: you can't load it down with DRM or any sort of copy protection, and so long as the 'analog hole' exists, you can dump audio to cassette tape. Sure, the quality is poor (somewhere between telephone and FM radio, fidelity-wise) but most people aren't audiophiles, they just want to hear music.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[The Grim Reefer]

If you used good tape and a quality cassette deck the high frequencies were fabulous. A good type II tape like Maxell UD-XLII or TDK-SA made amazing recordings. I had a Teac C3-RX which was one of their higher end decks. The tapes still sound amazingly good.

I used to be a musician and still have my Dolby S deck. But even the best tape you could buy that I'm aware of cut off at 17kHz. But those were considerably more expensive than TDK-SA-X. The ones you mentioned were really good consumer grade media. I think by the last time they were manufactured they cut off at 16kHz. I recorded hundreds of vinyl albums to TDK SA-X cassettes back in the day though. Granted, those recordings I made sounded better than the prerecorded cassettes of those albums. But the vinyl still sounded better. But my hearing was/is better than most, and I can still hear up to around 22kHz.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[wagnerrp]

If you were a frequenter of venues with live audio, you likely qualify as someone who can't hear high frequencies.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[arth1]

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

Checking with Newegg:
8 x normal bias 60 minute cassette tapes: $33.30, or $4.16 per tape
1 x 512 MB USB flash drive: $1.81
50 x 700 MB CD-R: $11.99, or $0.24 per CD

Never mind the cost of duplication time.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Danathar]

how about this? I also lived through the tape era, buying high end TDK and Maxell. Tapes died because something better came along. Are you REALLY going to tell me it's CHEAPER unit for unit for you to take the TIME to make a tape than burn a CD? And this whole argument about the "warmness" of tapes is goofy. The "tape experience" I remember consisted of hiss you couldn't get rid of no matter how much noise reduction you used, low dynamic range that couldn't be increased without using something like dbx encodings, tapes that broke, tapes that de-magnetized, tapes that JAMMED. Sorry, tapes are NOT cheaper, better than current digital mediums.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[arth1]

When you record an album, do you pay attention to the order and manner the individual tracks are recorded to the media? Do you try to craft it as a story that should be taken as a whole rather than a random collection of tracks? If so, score one for the cassette over a cd.

Nothing prevents you from saving one big track on a CD.
(Or using a player that actually looks at the pause data, and plays seamlessly when asked to.)

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[jonwil]

How is Cassette a cheaper option vs buying a cheap spindle of recordable disks and filling it either with digital data files or with regular CD audio?

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[stabiesoft]

This. Many years ago I took a relatively high end 3 head cassette deck (around 500 bucks which was a fortune back in the 70's) and hooked it up to a spectrum analyzer to get distortion and response curves. Lets just say anything above about 8KHz was a disaster. Yes relatively flat if you kept the levels at about -30db, but then the noise floor was right below. At reasonable input levels of -10 or -5 db, it was anything but flat. Wow and flutter was not good either. There was a reason why pro's used reel to reel for master tapes.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[thinkwaitfast]

How else can you do a digitally remastered release?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[youngone]

Cassettes have literally NOTHING to offer except the nostalgia

They did have one thing, which was quite fun.

When I was a kid in the eighties, some hard-core Christian I knew told me about playing various songs backwards to reveal a prayer to Satan (or some other sort of hogwash, I don't remember the details).

So a friend and I unscrewed a cassette, flipped one of the wheels and put it back together to play it backwards, I'm pretty sure it was his sister's copy of "Hotel California".

It was a really fun afternoon of pretending we could hear some sort of Satanist nonsense under all the noise.

Also tried it with "Revolution 9" from the White Album and "Back in Black" by AC/DC, (I think).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Tough Love]

You don't have access to the studio equipment needed to achieve a signal to noise ratio that still does not match 250kbps mp3. Your 1/8" tape moving at 2 inches/second certainly can't achieve anything remotely resembling transparency. The only thing that saves your argument is that audio transparency is subjective, so somebody who blew out their ears with earbuds at inappropriate level may be entirely correct in stating they can't hear the difference. Only because those ears now top out at 15 Khz or worse.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Falconhell]

Sure you can hear 22khz, and Im guessing you leap tall buildings in a single bound. In the real world
Anyone over 35 has no chance at all of hearing above 15khz.
You mat hear the subhamonic interactions of the higher frequencies, however there is no chance you are hearing the fundemental of 22 khz.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[enjar]

I used them in various automobiles from probably 1994 (with a Discman) till 2014 (using a smartphone). I also still use on in my garage radio. The reason I stopped using it in 2014 was that the cassette player I was using it did die -- but that's likely more a result of 12 years of use of the cassette deck, not the fault of the adapter. Sound quality can be described as "good enough".

I found cassette adapters far more reliable than alternatives like a FM transmitter (which, incidentally would also be a valid way to solve the "how to play my smartphone through my non-Bluetooth, non-Aux radio in my ancient truck) . The only thing I found that worked better was a FM adapter that plugged into the back of the radio, which is something I did when I added a CD changer once. This was, of course, orders of magnitude more difficult than popping the tape in.

Of course, the best thing was the sub-$100 radio I replaced the broken one with that came with Bluetooth. These days a basic Bluetooth enabled head unit is even less expensive. Install was a snap since the car had a standard DIN head unit and Crutchfield sent a harness adapter. A little work with the soldering iron matching colors, slide the old radio out, put the new one in. Far superior to the Bad Old Days of the early 80's when a radio swap was a lot more trial and error.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[tsotha]

Yeah, it makes no sense. But he's a musician, not an accountant.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[swb]

The Maxell XLIIs were always the go-to brand. I remember 10 for $20 in the mid 80s being a pretty good deal, and always making sure I had a 10 pack around.

I even wrote a program in high school for my Apple ][ that printed perfect cassette inserts for them, shifting the Epson MX-80 into condensed mode to fit the type into the narrow space.

I still used a lot of cassettes up until the late 1990s. In the early 1990s, LPs had cratered for CDs and it was often trivial to go to a local used record store and buy nearly an entire artists' catalog on nearly mint LPs for like $2-4 per record.

So rather than buying the back catalog stuff I was into at the time on CD, I just bought LPs and dubbed them onto good old XLIIs.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[whoever57]

You should have tried it with "My White Bicycle" by Tomorrow.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[whoever57]

Perhaps you really do want less choice?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

But Dale's an asshole. Kept stealing my play-doh

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[jbmartin6]

I would not suggest going back, but I did enjoy a lot of songs that the tape format forced me to listen to while driving. Nowadays with libraries of single songs and skip buttons, any song I don't like at first goes away. I won't bore you with an actual list, but there are a lot of songs I didn't like at first but then came to really enjoy. These would all be skipped with my modern digital setup.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a 12-page Instructable up on it.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[strikethree]

The hiss. The tape becoming damaged now and then resulting in parts of your songs being screwed up. The poor speed regulation on many tape decks. The felt pad under the tape becoming damaged or falling out and having to replace it, hoping not to damage the tape in the process. The tape getting "eaten" by the deck. The fact that almost all prerecorded tapes were made with the lowest quality tape possible (low bias, non-metal), so you didn't even get the best quality tape could provided from your music purchases.

All true. So very very true. You did forget one thing but I do not blame you for it since almost nobody but me ever did it: Tracking.

If the head was not aligned properly, you would lose lows and highs.

I completely agree. I see no reason for tapes at all. As a matter of fact, just the other day I was remembering all of the hassles associated with tape then in relation to digital files now. No matter what, a digital file ALWAYS sounds the same. It does not fade, there is no concern with tracking, etc etc.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[oobayly]

That's the problem with CDs - it's impossible to play from start to finish in one go, thereby breaking up the"story".

Meanwhile, back in reality...

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[youngone]

Youtube's blocked where I am, but when I get home I will definitely have a look.

Anything psychedelic interests me, and Steve Howe just makes it better.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Hognoxious]

Never had that happen.

Maybe because I worked out you need to change where the cable comes out depending on which way it loads.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[chihowa]

How is a cassette even remotely suitable for that purpose? You put it in the player and it starts wherever you last stopped it (or on the other side of the tape at some random spot). If you want to start the "story" from the beginning, you need to first wait while it rewinds (and hope that you're on the right side).

A CD is better for that, by virtue of starting from the beginning each time you play it alone.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Hognoxious]

The distortion on cassettes is different. It's warmer.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[rtb61]

The problem is nothing to do with media and everything to do with the marketing collapse of drunken drugged up minstrels. That old bullshit with the minstrels all cool rebel hero who suffers for their music is dying and with it goes the money. So now they are trying another route to hype up music to keep the billions in profits going with all the awful autotune lipsinking scam artists https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., of course they are nobodies without the publishers and the bjs in limos. So the industry is dying a slow grim death as the marketing dies. So they are simply trying to invent new hype to pump up publishers profits (no wonder US corporations hate RT).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get a portable digital recorder for no more than $150 from Musician's friend which records to SD card at 24 bit/96 khz resolution. It will even have the microphones built-in. Perfect for rehearsal recording or anything else you thought you might use cassettes for. Burning CDs is faster and cheaper than making tapes as well. And you can edit your recordings on any PC using the free, open source Audacity software, which is soooooo much easier and better than anything you can do with analog tape.

Cassette tapes really are audio buggy whips.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[PopeRatzo]

Sgt. Pepper's was only four tracks.

It was only four tracks at a time. George Martin was ping-ponging from deck to deck like crazy.

With a computer and a USB interface, you don't have to go through all that, thank god. My first recording system was an old Tascam 4-track and it was hell compared to what can be done today.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[chihowa]

Very true. I have fantastic hearing and have always taken care of my ears and I can't hear pure tones anymore past 15 kHz without cranking up the volume. Even then it's more of a "feeling" than actually hearing the tone. My cats freak out when I crank it up to 22 kHz, so the speakers are producing the tones just fine (and I double checked with a frequency analyzer).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Hognoxious]

I had a player in my first car that held the cassette in a horizontal plane and if you went round a tight corner the music would speed up or slow down.

And trust me, it wasn't because the car was fast and had great roadholding.

Also, you could only change the tape if you were in an even-numbered gear.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[chihowa]

Red book CD audio has 64 bits of error correction for each 561 bits of audio data, and the data frames are interleaved, but there's only one copy of the audio data on a disc. Many of the copy protection schemes fuck around with the data, especially the error correction data, to "prevent" copying, so the audio data has become more fragile than the red book standard.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Hognoxious]

Just consider how many parts - static & moving - a cassette has compared to a CD. GP is talking utter bollocks.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[fisted]

Holy shit I had completely forgotten about that. Thanks for bringing back memories!

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[fisted]

Yep. And if you run out of paper towel -- plenty of already wadded up paper towels of JUST the right size to be found inside your deck! It's win-win!

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[thegarbz]

e. With CDs, you still need a computer, software to record the audio, etc.

Presumably if you're happy to buy a second hand tape deck then you're happy to buy a standalone audio CD player/recorder for $50 of ebay too.

Oh wait you didn't think CD's just magically appeared on the market with computers and CD drives did you? .. like in the 80s... when computers still had floppy discs.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[hcs_$reboot]

Cassettes have literally NOTHING to offer except the nostalgia

The music quality may not be that good, but at least 30 years later you can still listen to what was on the tape. The CD? Doesn't survive over such a long period of time.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[LynnwoodRooster]

Get an FM modulator and you'll end up with sound better than your cassette, and a way to bypass it altogether (unless you have a cassette player without an FM radio?)...

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[LynnwoodRooster]

Try Tidal - redbook audio, streamed.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[PRMan]

You can buy an external USB DVD-R/CD-R burner for $25.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[PRMan]

And yet, you can rip the CD to your PC as a WAV file and reverse it in Sound Recorder even easier and quicker.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[hawguy]

The $139 price doesn't include jewel cases... and is before you go through all the steps. After you click through all the steps... it appears the minimum price is $159.10 with bulk packaging. Including the cheapest jewel case option (thin ones) brings you up to $240.10 for 100. And for full-on high-res printing on the disc with a shrinkwrapped digipack case you're looking at $526.10 for 100.

The pricing I quoted included jewel cases, the only thing I didn't include was shipping, for $37...
PROJECT TYPE CD
DISC CONTENT Printed Blank CD-R
DISC PRINT CD w/ Color Printing
MAIN PACKAGING TYPE Jewel Cases
CASEJewel Case with CLEAR Tray

PRICE $139.00
SHIPPING $37.30
SUB TOTAL (EXCL. TAX) $176.30

You can save $7 by going with 10 day turnaround time.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[PRMan]

I have a friend who, at 35, had absolutely no problem hearing up to 22 KHz. I tested blind and he could do it consistently. He complained that CDs cut off music abruptly at the high end and it was annoying compared to live music.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[HornWumpus]

Q: What do you call 250 Indian girls with no nipples?

A: The Indian nippleless 500.

I'll see myself out.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[HornWumpus]

Depends on how often you demagnetize the heads. High frequencies can go away in a single pass.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Many audio players in android and iOS have skins that look like cassettes spinning. So you can get all the high fidelity of digital sound and the nostalgia of looking at the spinning wheels with just the right touch of wobble.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

CD will survive, most likely, if they are not scratched. But CD players ? ... YMMV

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Lehk228]

no, the CD-r dye layers and CD foil layers are both vulnerable to oxidation and or attack by fungus

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Applehu Akbar]

"There is no reason to use tape aside from "retro hipsterism". (isn't that redundant?) Tape sucks on SO many levels."

One level of suckage was the mounds of tangled tape you always used to see on roadsides, hurled by drivers whose cassettes jammed while playing. Is this going to be back again?

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[rapjr]

Why use obsolete rotating optical disks when physical music distribution could be on microSD cards? Seems weird that I can't buy 100 4GB microSD cards really cheaply to use for purposes like this.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[AntiSol]

This is what I was going to say, except that I would have added that doing so has no chance of damaging the CD

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Immerman]

That do you mean? The "than" completely reverses the meaning of the sentence:
[you won't] get better fidelity from digital downloads = digital downloads are at best no better than other options
[you won't] get better fidelity than from digital downloads = digital downloads are the best quality available

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Ol Olsoc]

Your casual dismissal is just incorrect.

It isn't all that casual. I had plenty of cassettes that were eaten by the machinery. And go muzzy over time. I was darn happy to abandon cassettes as soon as I could. And no way will I buy another machine just to hear the voice quality, wow and flutter prone crap.

Its just old and bad technology.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Ol Olsoc]

Just consider how many parts - static & moving - a cassette has compared to a CD. GP is talking utter bollocks.

And then there are the players. A decent cassette player which is probably going to be a 1990's creation, will have lots of worn out rubber parts. And when they do this they get all wow and fluttery, and develop a pretty big appetite for munching on tapes. Bollocks indeed!

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[avandesande]

My mid 80s cds went completely to poop in about 15 years. I have 50's era records that play as good as the day they were pressed.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[mathew7]

I wouldn't give up my CDs (and their FLAC RIPs), but CDs allowed producers to make bad music (see loudness wars). Even re-releases were affected and I think it's the main reason why vinyls are still here. Considering cars with casette players are still available (yes, 2nd hand, I know), some may choose that compromise.
As for "sucks on SO many levels", I just hope you don't base that on unmaintained cheap players and casettes (you know, mainstream ones, that start catching your tape after 1 year). Just like vinyl players, there are cheap ones and good ones (and yes, FYI , I'm old enough to have used Sony Walkmans going to schools.....note the plural).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[gshegosh]

Is manufacturing tapes cheaper than manufacturing CDs? Colour me sceptical.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[nonicknameavailable]

The last version was near cd quality but it came out when people switched to cds so not that many was sold

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[tehcyder]

It didn't stop vinyl from coming back when it is objectively a worse format than a CD.

As far as I can see, the one thing that vinyl LPs have going for them is their size, so you can actually see the cover art.

With cassettes you don't even have that.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[jabuzz]

I would just screw up some scrap paper tight and stuff it in the hole.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[jabuzz]

Digital streaming however is way better than crappy compact cassettes. I took all my cassettes and threw them in the bin with the exception of a small number of childrens audio books from my childhood that are unavailable to purchase as CD's. These have been digitized on a high end deck and audio card by a friend and then extensively cleaned up. My nephew and nieces have loved listening to them but the sound quality is really quite bad, well below even a 128kbps MP3.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[sudon't]

I don't have a lot of cash, and I don't have a lot of sales. Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

CDs are about a dime each, if you don't mind paper or cardboard envelopes, (which, of course, is a small extra expense). With a jewel case, they're still cheaper than cassettes.

Cassette audio fidelity (or lack thereof) is a fine match for my typical output.

There's no reason cassette tapes shouldn't have high fidelity. After all, tape is what recording studios use. Sure, it's not 2" tape in there, but back in the day, I had a nice Nakamichi tape deck, and believe me, that thing recorded and reproduced high fidelity. It's really more dependent on the source recording.

In my opinion, tapes have the same problems as CDs - namely, broken jewel cases and tracking errors. But for a musician, I think it's smart to sell music on analog. That way, it's not so trivial to RIP and upload. A record, or even a cassette, has an intrinsic value, unlike digital. People, quite rightly, place no value on digital files, and are mostly unwilling to pay for them. People will buy records though, and apparently, even cassettes.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[OneoFamillion]

Yep. A few years ago I would have began an endless rant about the benefits of a CD vs. a cassette, but I must be getting old, since now I simply thought "well, each to their own I guess..."

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[houghi]

Or http://bandcamp.com/ That said, some people still want a physical thing and Bandcamp will allow you to sell anything next to the digital download.
This can be records, Special CD versions and what not. However these items will most likely be more expensive and can be look at more as collecters items. At low enough sales, they can be made individually.
When volume picks up, production prices will drop.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[houghi]

If you sell them as a musician, you will also need a box and inlay. Next you should also include printing, packaging and posting and the time it takes.

At low volumes this adds up.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Kielistic]

You'd need that for cassette too with, most likely, considerably less sourcing options.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[arth1]

The last cassette adapter I picked up has a few gears in it to keep everything spinning in the fake tape properly to avoid the latter problem.

No, that is just making the spindle hub moving. While that takes care of 80% of cassette decks out there, it does not work with those that have real capstan tightening - both capstan rollers engaged at play time, with one capstan put in neutral. Only an actual bit of tape being drawn between the roller and the passive capstan will get those rolling.

Most players are simpler, and just let a "tape out" tab do the tightening by pushing on the the tape as it passes a square hole. That has the nasty side effect of wearing the tape out, unlike the capstan tightening ones.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

If you sell them as a musician, you will also need a box and inlay.

What if you sell them as a heart surgeon or a carpenter? ;)

Seriously though, blank cassette tapes are more expensive than CDs and so are the cases (a quick check of google or amazon will confirm).

CDs are 13~15 cents or less and the cases are about the same. Add in the printed overlay and you might be close to 40 or 50 cents total. You can probably get them even cheaper but I didn't spend much time searching.

Cassettes start out somewhere around a dollar or more with a case, but you still have printing and packaging costs.

Postage will be roughly the same, perhaps a bit more for a cassette but not substantially so.

So no, I don't think cassettes are the answer, especially once you realize that practically no one has a working cassette deck anymore.

Re: It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Miamicanes]

True, but remember... if your goal is digitization, a high-quality deck only HAS to support type I and II bias (III and IV have the same bias as II for playback) and the ability to turn off any noise reduction. There are dozens of official and unofficial plugins for apps like Soundforge that can apply Dolby B/C/S or Dbx directly to the captured .wav file itself. The catch is that you need a deck with extremely linear response. Dbx at the hardware level can directly monitor the signal coming from the tape... Dbx at the plugin level has to make semi-educated guesses. Whatever you do, don't use lossy compression on the source... trying to de-Dbx a .mp3 file would be almost impossible.

Example plugin for Audacity that can decode Dbx: https://theaudacitytopodcast.c...

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[Tough Love]

rather than buying the back catalog stuff I was into at the time on CD, I just bought LPs and dubbed them onto good old XLIIs.

In the 90's you were ripping your prized vinyl collection to analog cassettes? Condolences.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[K10W]

It didn't stop vinyl from coming back when it is objectively a worse format than a CD.

ish.... you're mistaking the containers capabilities with the content. Part the reaon it made a comeback is hipster twats I admit (most the reason I'd guess) BUT some makes sense in that vinyl tends to be mastered properly and isn't brickwalled to fuck so actually ends up higher spec than CDaudio despite the fact vinyl "container" is inferior to CD/digital container formats. Look up the dynamic range on something like loudnesswars database or somewhere and compare the same album on vinyl release to the cd and digital download editions and you'll see vinyl is often mastered properly. I'm no audiophile (snakeoil and too much money for the most part) but I do use very good gear and hear the difference. Even on the go I use multiBA iem's and good cans and system to drive them at home because I have perfect range and perfect pitch and I notice stuff like that; some CD rips are unlistenable to me compared to the vinyl rip.

Now comparing properly done 16bit/44.1KHz digital file to vinyl yeah digital will always be superior, sadly the mastering a significant amount of releases totally negates that benefit. Sadly many don't realise how bad these things have gotten especially if they don't have perfect hearing and don't have systems to reproduce the difference and the theory doesn't always fit real world. Same happens when people say 24bit audio is pointless when it is far from it, in LISTENING you cannot tell the difference but in editing I notice the difference because there is MUCH more overhead with 24bit vs 16bit and with a complex workflow it really can help, the problem is people without full knowledge of audio work judge based on idiots who claim they can hear differences rather than people who need the extra headroom (simple workflows with little/no complex dsp it isn't needed tbh).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[doccus]

As another indy musician I totally agree with the previous one... CD-Rs are absolute crap. They are a terrible way to present your music, and do not last.. . Unless you can present on a silver CD, your music wonb;'t survive a tenth as long as on a cassette tape. The quality of moodern tapes is excellent, you know.. or you would if you listened to them... ;-)

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[rworne]

A good type II tape like Maxell UD-XLII or TDK-SA made amazing recordings.

Thanks for the flash of nostalgia. I used to make tons of recordings on Maxell and TDK tapes, before finally settling on my go-to choice: Maxell UD-XLIIS. Most of my stuff didn't play metal tapes, and I gravitated to CDs once the selection in record stores became better than a handful of classical titles and Toto IV.

There's two real memorable times I had when there were leaps in audio technology: The first time I heard a CD in a showroom after a lifetime of cassettes and LPs. And the first time I heard an audio system playing Raiders of the Lost Ark in Beta HiFi.

Nowadays if I want warm, I put a 78rpm record on the Victrola and crank it up (literally).

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[cwsumner]

If you were a frequenter of venues with live audio, you likely qualify as someone who can't hear high frequencies.

We wore earplugs when going to concerts, and they were so loud that we could hear fine through them!
You couldn't talk to friends, whether you had earplugs or not. Many people got used to using hand signals. 8-)

I used to be able to hear 24Khz, but nowdays it is only to about 12khz. Might have something to do with a jet fighter landing about 60 feet away, when I was in the Navy.

Re:It IS hipsterism (if that's a word)

[RespekMyAthorati]

Even if you don't present on a silver CD, your music will survive 10 times longer as on a cassette tape.

FTFY.
Your claims are total bullshit.

minidisc is where its happening!

[piggz1]

meh, i just dusted off my minidisc player last week!

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[demonlapin]

If minidisc hadn't had SCMS, and had been agnostic as to "is it music or is it data", it would have had a long run. Probably would still have some uses today, in fact, for backing up modest amounts of important data in physical form. Cassettes... Well, they were cheap, the hardware was cheap, and you could easily power them with standard disposable batteries. If you wanted to go interview remote populations deep in the jungle, and weren't too particular about sound quality, they would probably be a good choice today.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[rickb928]

Totally, but Minidisc did get a bad rap, claims that ATRAC was inferior to MP3 which is lie.

I love my MD player/recorder, it rand on batteries as well as the portable CD player I had, better than the cassettes I had.

SCMS was a problem. Since cassettes have none of that, let's see how that goes. But copy protection for cassettes was actually inherent. Each generational copy got worse and worse, so digital media actually CAUSED the DRM revolution... Sort of.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[bickerdyke]

Full ack.

Plus the form factor about the size of your palm, could handle it with one hand better than a CD (without bending it) not tiny as current usb sticks being lost forever if you dropped them in your car once.

They could have made a zip-disc killer if they made a combined data/music drive at that time.. Company policies killing a product.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[s.petry]

But copy protection for cassettes was actually inherent. Each generational copy got worse and worse, so digital media actually CAUSED the DRM revolution... Sort of.

Oh come now, most of us figured out that mastering was critical pretty quickly. You just had to know who bought the original of each tape you wanted and get the copy from them. Even 3rd generation mastering was not "too" bad if you had good recording gear.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[Anonymous Coward]

meh, i just dusted off my minidisc player last week!

Great, we should get together, I'll bring over my CED videodisc collection and we can watch fast times and ridgemont high, drink Mr. Pib and eat twinkies, it will be a blast!

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[rogoshen1]

i for one loved my MD player. ran basically forever on a single AA battery, reusable disks that could hold quite a lot of music (several hours, if you dialed down the quality), could do line-in recording etc.

The problem wasn't so much with the format, but with sony's fucked up software. (also the plummeting price of flash storage didn't help with adoption)

But the format itself was nice. A durable, reusable disk, with a a pretty small form factor.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[TheRaven64]

claims that ATRAC was inferior to MP3 which is lie.

No it's not (at least for the original ATRAC - the later versions were better, but pre-recorded minidiscs couldn't use them for compatibility reasons). The original ATRAC was horribly crude and threw away a load of frequency ranges before doing some fairly naive compression. I was at a lecture on digital compression techniques a couple of years after MiniDisc came out. The person giving the talk made us listen to both and the CD source without telling us which was which. Most people in the audience couldn't tell the MP3 from the CD but almost everyone could spot the ATRAC recording. Looking at the frequency curves of the two later in the lecture, it was pretty obvious why.

I completely agree with the grandparent on MD-Data though. In 1997, MD-Data could store as much as a CD on a cheap rewritable medium. If they'd licensed the player designs, you'd probably have seen MD replace floppy disks, especially in laptops and I doubt CD-Rs would have become nearly as popular as they did.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[TheRaven64]

Zip? They could have made a floppy disk killer. Instead, we had CD-RWs and floppies for years after MD was technically superior to both, yet crippled by stupid corporate decisions.

Re:minidisc is where its happening!

[rickb928]

I was spared the early versions. My player, Sharp MD-MS702, had ATRAC 5.

Analogue revival

[tietokone-olmi]

Vinyl recordings, magnetic tape, photo film. All are on the slow uptick since a few years ago.

Re:Analogue revival

[Frosty Piss]

Vinyl recordings, magnetic tape, photo film. All are on the slow uptick since a few years ago.

Buggy whips soon to follow!

Re:Analogue revival

[Ranbot]

I hear wax cylinders are making a comeback!

Re:Analogue revival

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I have heard some of the non audiophile arguments for vinyl being popular, usually it is a collector piece with added inserts, special add-ons and larger better cover art. For photos some people just like film and film photography is something that people do because it is film, just like people still paint scenery even though photography does a better job of capturing it accurately. It is now basically art and carries its own unique characteristics that digital doesn't have it will likely be able to keep on like that forever. I still don't see a reason for there to be an uptick in cassette tape as there was nothing redeeming about it when it was new other than it was portable.

Re:Analogue revival

[Tough Love]

Baby boomers retiring and trying to get their youth back.

No, they are not

[Trachman]

Cassetes have died long time ago and were totally pushed out by CD's.

CD's, at the same time, have been conquered by mp3/digital audios.

Now if you are talking about a bunch of retro aficionados, who collect vinyl, collect tapes, collect 35mm cameras. I am glad I do not hear that VHS tapes provide a more reliable image and have a soul.

Realistically, 140% increase is not enough to sustain increased interest in retro technology.

Re:No, they are not

[DarkOx]

I am glad I do not hear that VHS tapes provide a more reliable image and have a soul

Don't worry I am sure you will soon.

Re:No, they are not

[s.petry]

And what about Betamax you insensitive clod?

Re:No, they are not

[The-Ixian]

I hear Betamax will be included in the next PlayStation rev....

Re:No, they are not

[Immerman]

Yep, give me good vinyl or give me high-quality digital downloads. Everything in between was a hack to cut costs or increase portability. In fact, unless your mp3s were made from a professional high-fidelity original and end up taking up more space than a raw rip of the equivalent CD, then they're hacks too.

Re:No, they are not

[grep -v '.*' *]

I am glad I do not hear that VHS tapes provide a more reliable image and have a soul

Don't worry I am sure you will soon.

No you won't -- VHS tapes are awful. You need to obtain the VHS audiophile TUBE system to actually enjoy the entire experience. The sound is so much warmer and entertaining compared to those old hard, cold plastic black boxes that the awful stretchable plastic tape came in.

And the NOISE? All that clicking and whining and whirring? Tubes are quieter, warmer(!) and just so much better!

Re:No, they are not

[thinkwaitfast]

Tubes are quieter

I keep my transistors and IC's immersed in LN2. I thought this was a nerd site.

Re:No, they are not

[LinuxIsGarbage]

No you won't -- VHS tapes are awful. You need to obtain the VHS audiophile TUBE system to actually enjoy the entire experience.

D-VHS was the first way to get high definition prerecorded videos for playback at home, predating Bluray and HD-DVD.

Now this is just getting stupid

[DarkOx]

Compact Cassettes are nothing but entirely obsolete. Unlike vinyl which might in some cases have desirable audio characteristics compared with an compresses digital audio file, or even a CD. Cassettes just SUCK period full stop.

They are less seekable than even vinyl (which is quite seekable if you have good turn table) They are all sorts of problems with streching and temperature variation. They don't really have all that great a bandwidth, frequency response. They are fragile. All in all nobody should want to use one of these for anything anymore. It was nice when it was the only technology that could offer portability with good capacity, and good enough reliability (things 8-track did even worse).

What's next 8-track coming back too.

There is nostalgia and there is nonsense, and cassettes belong in the nonsense category.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[avandesande]

LPs also give you a couple of nice size pages of interesting reading or imagery and are fun to play. Tapes ALWAYS sucked.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[ColdWetDog]

Apparently those are all plusses for certain 'noise artists' (no, I'm not looking that up).

OTOH, you don't need iTunes for it, so there is an upside.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[Jason Levine]

Tapes had portability going for them back in the day. You could take a lot more cassette tapes with you than you could vinyl records. Plus, a cassette player fit into your car easier than a record player would. They weren't a great solution, but they were the best we had with the technology of the day. However, their portability edge was surpassed by CDs and then shattered by MP3s.

The last time I touched a cassette tape was when I found one in my old room at my parents' house and decided to show my kids how I listened to music. They were fascinated with it but quickly grew frustrated by being unable to fast forward or rewind to the exact spot where a song began.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[PCM2]

I get various types of enjoyment out of my vinyl collection. Yes, the sound is pretty good -- in some cases better than the CD (because the CD was mastered for the "noise wars" and had to be remastered for vinyl). But there's also the enjoyment of full-sized art, lyric sheets you can read, occasional bonus artwork, colored vinyl is pretty common, have a couple of "three-sided" records where the fourth side has been etched with artwork, I have a couple of records with holograms on them ... hell, one record I own even features a playable board game in the gatefold. Choosing vinyl is a fun way to interact with your music beyond just listening to it. It's a different experience even than buying CDs.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[Immerman]

Not to mention that you could use the same basic cassette player in your home and your car - a phonograph capable of not scratching your records while driving around bumpy streets is considerably more sophisticated than the one in your living room.

Cassettes had their niche - and at the high end could even rival vinyl (though good luck finding most stuff on such high-end tapes), but in a world where a digital download that blows laserdiscs out of the water consumes maybe $0.01 worth of bandwidth and hard drive space, there doesn't seem to be a compelling case for them. At least not if the digital market delivered a fraction of the quality and convenience it so easily could.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[DarkOx]

I had ones that could do that but it was very slow and you certainly could not just say "play track 5". I have a turn table with a laser that shines on the disk and a photo sensor that can detect the level of reflected light. Its able to find tracks about 90% of the time. It moves the tone arm to the edge of the disk, and scans across counting the blanks spaces, its pretty fast. Once it counts the right number of spaces it drops the tone arm.

Its not CD player fast by any means but its way fast than seek on any consumer tape desk has ever worked.

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[Lehk228]

there is no reason why you couldn't have a CD with a vinyl size package and art, while still getting to enjoy the higher sound quality (there is no doubt of the superiority of redbook audio)

Re:Now this is just getting stupid

[HornWumpus]

'Noise wars' predate CDs. It was worse on vinyl as they had much less margin.

percentage games

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, if you sold 1 last and you sold 2 this year, you increased sales by 100%.

I've seen this game far more than I'd care to count on the sales side.

Hipsters filling landfills.

[geekmux]

Ironically, the resurgence of new retro hipster media (cassettes) that no one owns a player for is only explained by resurgence of yet another form of retro hipster media (vinyl) that has now become rather obscenely priced.

Of course, the only thing even more obscene than paying $30 for a piece of vinyl is paying five times that amount for a concert ticket.

I'm all for supporting artists, but perhaps we could figure out another way of doing it instead of creating another fucking AOL-era of worthless plastic media filling landfills.

Re:Hipsters filling landfills.

[fbobraga]

I'm all for supporting artists, but perhaps we could figure out another way of doing it instead of creating another fucking AOL-era of worthless plastic media filling landfills.

It's why I buy music if I like it - "recording labels" does'nt makes much sense nowadays...

Re:Hipsters filling landfills.

[geekmux]

If you're not in to paying the going rate for physical media then so be it. Denigrating others who do want it as 'hipsterism' entirely misses the point & though I shouldn't try to claim I know how you 'feel things' I would suggest that you are losing something by only valuing the data that makes up the 'music'. The VALUE in owning the physical media was never JUST about the music, it was in taking in the whole experience, reading liner notes for the upteenth time while listening to the music, just looking at the coverart even though you know/knew what it looked like (just as you 'know' what the music 'sounds like').

For MANY people The 'art' is NOT just in the music, but if that's all you value then so be it & I'm not going to denigrate how you value something but I would suggest you provide the same consideration for others who value more than just the music. I might even go so far as to say you should hang out with people who do value more than just the music, you might surprise yourself and find that your 'love' of the music changes in indefinable but real ways.

This may come as a shock, but I don't buy digital media. I prefer recycling physical media, and enjoy the richness of liner notes and the privacy it affords me as I listen to my music with hardware crafted from a time before the internet, well before corporations riddled every product with spyware to in order to whore out everything about you.

That said, liner notes can be printed on recycled paper or shared digitally, and supporting the artist can be done with an electronic donation of funds. Wasteful movements to revive media formats that are not actually used is pointless hipsterism. Speaking of showing love, how about humans start to respect how their actions affect the host that sustains life.

Fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this what they mean by fake news?

Re:Fake news?

[ebvwfbw]

Someone probably found a storage locker full of tape decks. Make a fake news story, sell them for $100 a pop instead of hauling them to the dump.

Re:In this economy?

[ShanghaiBill]

Who has disposable income?

You can buy a used cassette player at a garage sale for like 25 cents. The seller will throw in a pile of cassettes for free. Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s look at cassettes as garbage to be disposed of. There is no rational reason to use them, and the only reasons listed in TFA are BS like being "tangible", as if having physical clutter in your life is a good thing. Also, stupid metrics like "up 140%" are meaningless without giving the base number, which TFA doesn't.

140%

[Jfetjunky]

So yearly sales went from 10 per year to 24 per year?

Haha, I kid, I kid.

Re:140%

[s.petry]

No, that would be from 10-14. Your numbers are a 240% increase.

Re:140%

[fred6666]

TFS says the sales are up 140%. What if they were up by "only" 40%? Wouldn't they raise from 10 to 14?
10 to 24 is a 140% increase, or 240% of the original value.

Re:140%

[tinkerton]

You'll have to try harder if you want parody, because you're more or less describing what is happening.
I followed the links and deep down I found this http://www.buzzanglemusic.com/... :

There were 11,489 cassettes purchased during the Holiday Season (an increase of 140% over 2015).

Holiday season is one month , from end november to end of the year.
Also

The biggest selling album (as well as top Christmas album) during the 2016 holiday season was A Pentatonix Christmas with 712,534 sales and the biggest selling vinyl album was Blurryface by twenty one pilotswith 22,006 sales

On-demand audio streams during the 2016 Holiday Season were up 62% compared to 2015 with 34.3 billion streams.

Vinyl album sales during the 2016 Holiday Season were up 28% compared vinyl album sales in 2015 (1.99M vs. 1.56M).

Re:140%

[s.petry]

Marketing counts the first 100% as equal. Mathematically you are correct, but that is not how marketing works. Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics.

Bill the Cat is back and high on Life

[puddingebola]

I busted out some old cassettes here in the last year. Big fun. I remember a friend who was a Communications and media major in college, and he had this radio engineer professor, and he made a tape with an example of AUDIO HUMMMMMMM. When I popped in those old cassettes, AUDIO HUM. It's kind of cool when the film shoots out of the Polaroid camera. It's just another generation's fascination with the artifacts of the past.

8-Track Tape is next

[Camel Pilot]

What could be more "retro" than 8-track tape. Imagine pulling few of these out at your next hipster party! Yeah they play continuously and have a hearty form factor to hold the curiosity and make a case for art.

If this takes off, with my 8-Track horde I will be rich!

Re:8-Track Tape is next

[aevan]

Hey, 8track has features I've not seen since.
In the old caddy, with quadrophonic sound, once those 8tracks hit an age..you could have different songs out of different speakers.. something for everyone!

Re:8-Track Tape is next

[thinkwaitfast]

There were some kids in my high school class that drove their van into a ravine and all died. When the van and bodies were found a week later, the 8 track was still playing Stairway to Heaven.

I suppose it was Guardian of the Galaxy that ....

[lkroll4565]

.....started this craze. lol :)

Physical Nostelgia / Not Quality

[foxalopex]

Personally for sound quality I would stick with CD or FLAC format digital file. They are both digital, zero compression and sound great assuming they were mastered properly and you're playing them on good quality speakers. If your speakers are of poor quality or you've lost your high frequency hearing with age, good luck telling the difference.

I can understand the attraction to tape or vinyl formats however. They have a physical aspect which folks also like. It is neat to see a tape load and play or to listen to a record with your amplifier turned off. (The needle actually vibrates loud enough to hear if you listen carefully.) It's like having a steam powered car. It would be fun to play with but not too practical. So just because it's a dated or less than perfect format doesn't mean folks don't have an interest in it.

Re:Physical Nostelgia / Not Quality

[Octorian]

Except analog magnetic tape is one of those "intermediate shitty formats" that provided convenience in its day and bridged the time gap between the older "good" formats and the newer "good" formats.

One wonders

[thunderclees]

One wonders if they are making these new cassettes to self destruct like the originals were rumored too

My art is shit

[DarkOx]

"Tapes were biggest mostly in noise and hardcore, where the fact that they were degraded was almost kind of an asset," says Keyes. "Because it made it sound muddier and screwed with the dynamics and the sound in an interesting way."

Translation the artistic works are so poor and of so little value its better if you don't look or listen to closely.

Re:My art is shit

[phantomfive]

90% of recordings are really poorly mastered. and half of the ones that are properly mastered

How does one learn to properly master a recording?

Re:My art is shit

[Khyber]

First protip: Ditch your compressor and learn how to record from source at maximum possible volume.

I play bass on the internet, people go "Holy shit that's loud and clear, what's your compressor?" and I just point to a plain shitty Kustom amp and mixer board. The bass guitar doesn't even have working potentiometers, it's raw pickup to jack. Amp is set to middle position everything volume and EQ. Volume is adjusted on mixer to just barely hit the yellow line on my meter on mixer when I slam on the strings, then kicked back a notch. This allows for huge dynamic range in my playing (assuming my gear isn't making tons of noise.) My volume level for recording on Windows is at like 5 on the line-in, and the mixer is using the tape output to feed to signal to the computer for recording so it's just a line-level signal with no volume control (as opposed to if my outputs were going through the Main or Control Room outputs.)

Kill the compressor, regain your dynamic range and tonal qualities.

Re:My art is shit

[phantomfive]

Yeah, that's good, it takes more skill though, because you the performer are responsible for managing volume level (breath control, as singers call it). Usually I set the compressor to be just strong enough to smooth out the performer's (mainly me) unintentional volume spikes.

Re:My art is shit

[Falconhell]

There are some bass sounds that can be generated by using a compressor that cannot be simulated without one.
In fact, your little amp is probably acting as a compressor by running out of power.
If you ever get out of your bedroom to a real gig, you may well find you need compression.

Re:My art is shit

[Falconhell]

Further, all magnetic pickups have a saturation point, at which no further output is obtainable, and therefore act as a compressor, this is known as choking by pro's.

Re:My art is shit

[TeknoHog]

To me, music means sound waves in the air, something meant to be listened with your ears. Whenever I see these hipsters talking about vinyl or cassettes etc., I wonder if they care more about the storage format than the music itself. If they cared about the music, they might choose a format that doesn't degrade the music so much.

Re:My art is shit

[Khyber]

Good thing my pickups are custom built with powerful magnets and thick conductor wire so you can't ever reach the saturation point. Very crisp SLAP when I literally pound my thumb into the E string.

Also, my amp is not acting as a compressor as it's just feeding the raw line signal (speaker is not connected so we're never hitting even 1/5 power draw at any time) to the mixer board. It's purely a signal processor/EQ at its current setup points.

Re:My art is shit

[Falconhell]

Every solid cored pickup has a saturation point. The wire and magents make no difference to the saturation of the core at all.
You may get a hotter average signal, which only increses the chance of saturation, and therefore compression.
Electronics 101...

Re:My art is shit

[Khyber]

". The wire and magents make no difference to the saturation of the core at all."

Without the wire and magnets, you have no core period. It's all in the construction. Use a shitty weak magnet and thin conductors, you overload it easily. Use a strong magnet with thick conductors, you can't reach the saturation point as easily.

Pickup design 101. I've gone through several HUNDRED variations of magnet and conductor, from nail+bottlecap+bell wire+fridge magnets to United Nuclear magnets and 12-gauge wiring.

Pickups are not transformers, despite sharing several characteristics. Break out your o-scope and start building them.

i always hated tape

[FudRucker]

all formats, reel to reel, 8-track, cassettes, etc...

tapes can stretch, sooner or later something is going to hang up and you will have stretched tape, with the exception of computer files CD/DVD is the only way to go, just keep them clean & dry and always keep them in their jackets when not in use so they dont get scratched

Re:i always hated tape

[freeze128]

So many different ways audio quality on cassette can suck:

Tape stretches - audio slows down
Tape creased - muffled audio or dropouts
Reels not turning smoothly - WOW and FLUTTER
Track mis-alignment - crosstalk from a song on other side of tape (played in reverse)
Broken tape - Sure, you can maybe splice it back together, but unlike film, you're going to notice the gap.

Don't leave it in your car on a hot day - will melt
Don't leave on top of your speaker - magnetic field will affect it.

And *NOBODY* ever properly cleaned the pinch roller and capstan on their player (especially in car radios - It's just too difficult to get into those), causing increased risk of your tape being eaten.
Also, so many tape problems will affect songs on BOTH sides of the tape.

Audio Cassettes: Good Riddance!

I don't buy it.

[fish_in_the_c]

Hipsterism sure, but I don't buy it that tapes are popular for any kind of economic reasons. Seriously you can create your own CD's for no more and maybe less then tapes.

Re:I don't buy it.

[fbobraga]

even phones can record digital audio with some quality...

Re:I don't buy it.

[fish_in_the_c]

yeah, that i can see. tapes possibly too, but the article said tapes were coming back because it was cheap to 'record' them. You can literally record your own CD's for pennies.

Re:Cassettes are dumb

[PPH]

Cassettes offer no advantage

Media form factor. Smaller than CDs. Smaller than vinyl as well, although that has other issues with being a mobile media.

MP3 and FLAC assume some sort of digital storage media.

Re:In this economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do. Wife and I both have well paying full times jobs in medicine and research in a low cost-of-living area. We don't have, and don't want children.

Perspective from someone who buys cassettes...

[ScottMitting]

I've been buying cassettes from local artists for some time now, simply because I like the form factor of the case better. They are a nice shape and stack nicer than the pile of CDs I also have. Most of the CDs remain unwrapped, just like the tapes remain unplayed. I buy these, obviously to support the artists, but as reminders to go online and play their free streams. That's how I actually listen to the music. The physical product (for me) is about artwork and reminders.

Re:Perspective from someone who buys cassettes...

[ZenShadow]

That's what mini CD-Rs are for.

I'd forgotten about those.

Re:Wait wait wait

[bobthesungeek76036]

We skipped over 8 track. When is that going to be cool again?

I'm waiting. I still have a Marantz 8-track recorder in mothballs waiting for its comeback...

Actual Numbers

[tranZent]

From the actual report

There were 11,489 cassettes purchased during the Holiday Season (an increase of 140% over 2015).

Re:Actual Numbers

[FaxeTheCat]

So there are probably more people commenting on this article than are actually puchasing cassettes.

Re:In this economy?

[drkoemans]

Clearly you haven't been paying attention. If you find a cassette deck for $.25 I strongly suggest you pick it up and throw it on ebay. My broken tape deck is selling in the neighborhood for $100 on ebay currently. I tried to buy an old 4 track recorder to salvage some band recordings I made in my teen years and I couldn't justify the expense at the current rate. They are selling for as much used as I paid for them new 25 years ago. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...

First Vinyl... Then Cassette

[Oswald McWeany]

First Vinyl... Then Cassette...

Next CDs will make a comeback. Even retro hipterism can't save the 8-track though.

Re:First Vinyl... Then Cassette

[OrangeTide]

I only collect sheet music.

Re:First Vinyl... Then Cassette

[Luthair]

Personally I still buy music on CD for the simple fact that ironically its cheaper for me to buy and ship a CD to my house than it is to buy it from Apple / Google. Plus its still the best option from for fidelity.

Re:First Vinyl... Then Cassette

[Oswald McWeany]

If I'm honest, I buy CDs occasionally, once or twice a year, for the same reason, it's sometimes cheaper. Plus, I've noticed that Amazon gives me the digital copy for CDs I purchase from them (at least they used to, haven't in a few years), which makes buying from them ideal for gifts... I give the CD as a gift and I get the digital copy...

Re:First Vinyl... Then Cassette

[K10W]

First Vinyl... Then Cassette...

Next CDs will make a comeback. Even retro hipterism can't save the 8-track though.

As I said elsewhere there is a reason vinyl is popular, not because it is inherently superior but because of bad audio engineering practises and dicks like rick rubin. Containers capabilities are one thing but often the content is nowhere near (like 5bit in a 16bit container). Part the reaon it made a comeback is hipster twats I admit (most the reason I'd guess) BUT some makes sense in that vinyl tends to be mastered properly and isn't brickwalled to fuck so actually ends up higher spec than CDaudio despite the fact vinyl "container" is inferior to CD/digital container formats. Look up the dynamic range on something like loudnesswars database or somewhere and compare the same album on vinyl release to the cd and digital download editions and you'll see vinyl is often mastered properly. I'm no audiophile (snakeoil and too much money for the most part) but I do use very good gear and hear the difference. Even on the go I use multiBA iem's and good cans and system to drive them at home because I have perfect range and perfect pitch and I notice stuff like that; some CD rips are unlistenable to me compared to the vinyl rip.

Now comparing properly done 16bit/44.1KHz digital file to vinyl yeah digital will always be superior, sadly the mastering a significant amount of releases totally negates that benefit. Sadly many don't realise how bad these things have gotten especially if they don't have perfect hearing and don't have systems to reproduce the difference and the theory doesn't always fit real world. Same happens when people say 24bit audio is pointless when it is far from it, in LISTENING you cannot tell the difference but in editing I notice the difference because there is MUCH more overhead with 24bit vs 16bit and with a complex workflow it really can help, the problem is people without full knowledge of audio work judge based on idiots who claim they can hear differences rather than people who need the extra headroom (simple workflows with little/no complex dsp it isn't needed tbh).

Wrong

[tacokill]

Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium. You are wrong. Cassettes are not less expensive than pressing out a stack of CD's. If you aren't seeing that, you should find another outfit to press your CD's.

By every possible measure, CD's accomplish everything cassettes do and they do it better. I, literally, cannot think of one feature that makes cassettes better except that maybe they archive longer because they are magnetic vs optical.

Re:Wrong

[Khyber]

" Cassettes are not less expensive than pressing out a stack of CD's"

I can find plenty of cassette tapes for a nickel each at garage sales and re-use those after a thorough five-pass erase.

Re:Wrong

[tacokill]

Duuuuuude.....how much do you charge for your time? Did you consider the cost of your 5-pass erase in your estimate? I ask because CD's are about $.01 a piece and they have machines that can crank them out by the 1000's automatically and with no user interaction.

Re:Wrong

[PRMan]

No. All my oldest CDs work fine, but all my newest cassettes (from the same era) are warped and sound awful. And I live in the relatively dry and stable California.

Re:Wrong

[jabuzz]

If you owned it on CD and purchased it Digital then you are a prize smuck.

Re:Wrong

[Khyber]

A five-pass erase is as simple as throwing the thing under a super-powerful magnet for five passes. I've got a 3" x 6" x 2" neodymium magnet that can pulls the pans out of my cupboard from three feet away. Tapes, credit cards with magnetic stripes, anything magnetic gets near it, it's getting wiped thoroughly with just the first pass, but I do it five times over since it's easy enough to push a button to reverse the conveyor belt.

Re:In this economy?

[Rakarra]

Who has disposable income?

Most people aren't doing THAT badly.
The economy isn't exactly gangbusters, but it's not in the shitter like many who wanted "change" have recently tried to convince you.

Re:Cassettes are dumb

[fbobraga]

Smaller than CDs

volume, not just area, is more relevant here, I think...

Re:Hipster

[Rakarra]

With thick black glasses and a Muslim-style beard.

Hipsters go for a much more shaped and trimmed beard than most Muslims do.

Re: In this economy?

[DewDude]

Was it a portastudio 4track cassette? Ive had luck digitizing them myself with a two-track player...a dbx box...some digital editing...and lots of practice.

Re:I suppose it was Guardian of the Galaxy that ..

[Rakarra]

.....started this craze. lol :)

And it was still merely nostalgic -- the whole point of Quill's still listening to his Awesome Mix tape was it was the last remaining thing he had from his mother. Still, I'd think that the tape would eventually have gotten ruined from repeated listening. :-)

Not many

[Roger W Moore]

140% of almost zero is still very close to zero.

Goldmind?

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I can only hope the next "retro" step is a bunch of hipsters wanting to use the old DAT cassette tapes...we've got several boxes in storage here at work I could shift off on to Ebay.

Re:In this economy?

[pr0fessor]

I do a lot of work with indie bands anything from musical arrangements to graphic art I don't know any that are selling cassettes. They like to go with CDs because they are cheaper and ship faster, digital download cards are really popular too.

"It's not solely about retro hipsterism"

[Chas]

You're right!

It's about taking advantage of retro hipsterism to rake in cash from stupid retro hipsters.

Re:In this economy?

[phantomfive]

You missed the memo: America is Great Again (tm)

100% wrong

[Roger W Moore]

No, that would be from 10-14. Your numbers are a 240% increase.

Sorry but you are quite literally 100% wrong.

what's next

[qQ7eBMsfM5gs]

I can predict what's going to be next: reel-to-reel tape recorders and phonographs.

Re:This is what happens with poor education

[desdinova 216]

(sarcasm) but it's not on the test (/sarcasm)

Re: In this economy?

[drkoemans]

Essentially, yamaha MT120. I thought about just playing them in my standard tape deck and using software to flip it around and align the tracks but as I mentioned in my first post, my tape deck is broken too and I've been pissed about how expensive they are to replace. Getting back on topic though, I'm with everyone else in this thread, tapes really provide no value in this modern world. They were a hacky solution at best meant to solve the home recording problem. As a v1.0 they met the criteria but bring nothing to the party in 2017 other than sentimental memories.

Re:In this economy?

[Immerman]

>They are selling for as much used as I paid for them new 25 years ago.

So, considerably less than half-price in inflation adjusted dollars? That sounds reasonable for used products in good working condition.

Caused by movies

[normanjd]

Obviously driven by sales of "Greatest Hits of Guardians of the Galaxy" Volumes 1 + 2... ;)

Re:In this economy?

[Khyber]

"There is no rational reason to use them"

Uhh, tape doesn't skip when you hit a bump, unlike most optical disc players (even with buffering.)

Re:In this economy?

[Immerman]

Depends where you're at on the ladder. Anything in the neighborhood of the middle class has seen a hit, but mostly nothing devastating unless you were already so overextended that your personal financial bubble burst. In the bottom quartile though, things are getting rougher considerably faster.

Cost

[Luthair]

Its laughable that the website talks about how tapes are great from a cost perspective compared to vinyl, when CDs are significantly better than both.

Re:In this economy?

[cayenne8]

I still have my old Nakamichi cassette deck. If I recall, it needed to maybe have the heads adjusted a bit.

But, back then, you didn't BUY pre-recorded cassettes...those just sucked.

To get the best quality out of them back in the day, you recorded your vinyl album onto them....I used to get the Maxell high bias tapes...can't remember the exact model, but those sure sounded good for the day.

Now.....if they brought back Reel-To-Reel tape and tape decks again, I might be interested in that.

I never got one back in the day, but I sure wanted one...

Re:I suppose it was Guardian of the Galaxy that ..

[Luthair]

Guardians also sold their soundtrack in a limited run on cassette for novelty. iirc they said at that time they had a difficult time finding some place to have them made so its interesting that random artists are finding somewhere

Re:In this economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why thumb drives exist.. They don't skip at all.

Turn off DNR

[istartedi]

Turn off DNR. They will stop booming and start hissing.

Seriously though, it's nice to see this analog format sticking around. It does have some advantages, and if I could actually *find* any of my old tapes I'm sure most of them would play--no codecs, no security issues. My boombox has some wonky knobs and a busted antenna, but the Russians have no idea what I'm playing on it.

Re:In this economy?

[tempo36]

I was all prepped to dismiss this as hipster BS, but I did think the points about artist budgets was worth thinking over.

The cost of producing digital music is low, but the profit from selling a digital track is low too if selling through the main distributors. I can understand that if you're playing at venues or on the road, that selling digital tracks is a pretty crummy way to make a spare buck. So sure, if you can have cassettes ready to go, and folks are willing to buy them and can play them...maybe I can see a niche.

That said, a blank cassette costs $1-2 or so from my quick Google. A blank CD costs $0.30 or less. So I'm not sure why one "old" physical medium would be preferable over a cheaper one except for hipster cred. The article only mentions tapes vs vinyl. No mention of the lowly CD.

Re:In this economy?

[gnick]

Neither do MP3s. And the quality's better. But, I guess they're not "tangible."

Re:Hipster

[cayenne8]

Hipsters go for a much more shaped and trimmed beard than most Muslims do.

That and they don't tend to blow-up quite as often....

Re:In this economy?

[drkoemans]

For a machine that will likely have had no maintenance and many consumable parts? If you don't mind paying half price adjusted for inflation for a used machine I've got 2000 Toyota Camry for sale right right now. Adjusted for inflation from what I paid new 2000 ($24,000) at half price (adjusted) that comes to $16,000. Current blue book is about $3000. I've probably got a washer/dryer set in a similar vintage I'm willing to make that same sweetheart deal on.

The internet is full of comments like yours so I'll pretend to take you seriously for a second. I think the reason the price is so high right now (whereas they were pennies on the dollar a few years ago) is obviously the market is hot but more importantly there is a scarcity problem. My very high end Sony ES apparently died without me realizing it despite being kept in a production setting, though never used. So many of the rubber and plastic parts have degraded on these machines in 20 or more years that many of them didn't make it into the new century. That of course and many probably went into the dust bin long ago.

Re:In this economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you want your music to pass through a "make it sound like shit" filter that is an analog cassette player, you should just run it through once and record the output onto your computer. (Bonus points if you just hold your phone up and use Voice Memo recording for extra shit sound.)

Then you can play it on your digital music player or phone without worrying about skips, while enjoying your godawful tastes in music.

sales up 140%

[thygate]

sounds a lot better than saying we sold 42 items

Why, o why?

[OneHundredAndTen]

As somebody who grew up when cassette tapes had their heyday, I would never go back to that. Slow, prone to become entangled, to deteriorate, awful sound, a pain in the neck to copy, etc. A $10 USB stick will hold more music than my entire collection of cassette tapes in the 80s did; the sound quality of the tracks will in general be far better; the format is more portable and convenient; it can be trivially backed up. May cassette tapes stay in the history books, where they belong - they were great, at the time, but today they are ridiculous.

Dolby S noise reduction was solid

[acoustix]

I recorded some live performances to cassettes with Dolby S before I had the ability to record to hard drive. I was amazed at the difference, and in side-by-side comparisons I liked it better than minidisc. I also used DAT, which was superior to everything.

Re: In this economy?

[eneville]

whereas mod and stm files played just fine on 486 33mhz

LOL

[sexconker]

why it's not solely about retro hipsterism

LOL! That's all it EVER is with audio. Same with vinyl.

You don't see movie lovers going back to VHS/BETA/Laserdisc/8mm/etc. unless there's a specific release limited to those formats (Star Wars on LD, for example). And then it's a Herculean effort to transfer it faithfully to a modern format.

Re:LOL

[K10W]

why it's not solely about retro hipsterism

LOL! That's all it EVER is with audio. Same with vinyl.

You don't see movie lovers going back to VHS/BETA/Laserdisc/8mm/etc. unless there's a specific release limited to those formats (Star Wars on LD, for example). And then it's a Herculean effort to transfer it faithfully to a modern format.

that isn't true. Maybe that is all it EVER is with audio if you're basing it on discussion of none experts in non audio mastering forums. Peoples ignorance is understandable since they have no experience of it and they don't need to know but there is reasons why vinyl is valid to some. Sadly you wont hear those reasons from audiphiles and hipster twats who make hte most noise to the general public and make most the sales up. The real reasons are linked to things like the dynamic range compression and improper limiters like brickwalling things to death. Not everyone notices either since they are ignorant of what to look for, they don't have perfect range and pitch, they don't have the gear to reproduce formats close to what they're capable of and so on so myths on both sides get repeated. Sadly marketing and cliched myths are commonly heard among "normal" people including audiophiles and the facts get buried in the noise. Also when it comes to gear it isn't necessarily about money as you often don't get what you pay for.

Re:In this economy?

[Bartles]

There is a reason, certainly from the artist's point of view. It's to present to the listener the concept of an album, rather than a collection of tracks. Something that is meant to be listened to from start to finish. A story.

Oh Boy...

[bobthesungeek76036]

I still have a couple high-end cassette recorders that haven't seen use for at least 20 years. That was the thing back in what the 80's? I used to buy blank metal tape and record all my albums onto cassette to listen to in the car. That was bitchin' quality back then ... until CDs came out which pretty much killed cassettes for cars. Maybe I will have the chance to sell these recorders for something...

Pencil sales are up

[kimvette]

In a related stories, wooden pencil sales are up 140%.

LOLgasm

[sootman]

O M F G. I clicked through to the report (warning: PDF) (more dire warnings: crappy infographic style; pages are portrait orientation) and it's even more hysterical than I thought. "Booming", you say?

There were 11,489 cassettes purchased during the Holiday Season (an increase of 140% over 2015).

Compare that to

AUDIO STREAMS reached a new record high of 250.7 BILLION, up 82.6% over 2015.

To an ant, a firecracker looks like an atomic bomb. There were TWENTY-TWO MILLION times more streams than cassettes sold. Even if you call 1 stream = 1 song and figure a cassette has 10 songs, that's still TWO MILLION to ONE.

Two words: statistically insignificant.

From Wikipedia: "Sales of pre-recorded music cassettes in the U.S. dropped from 442 million in 1990 to 274,000 by 2007." So 2016 saw ONE TWENTY-FOURTH of what was sold in disamal 2007, which was 1/1613 the size of the market in 1990. "Booming", indeed.

Fucking A. The numbers are fine but the "story" is BULLSHIT. What a complete waste of (virtual) ink.

In a related story, my sex life is booming -- there was a 100% increase from 2015 to 2016. (Got some twice last year, versus once the year before.)

Re:LOLgasm

[sootman]

Bah. Meant to fix a couple points above -- the report is about the "holiday season 2016" and some of my other numbers are for whole years. Still, we're in the ballpark. Assuming sales went UP -- drastically -- during the holidays, we're probably looking at 20k sales in the year. More likely something like 15k. If they're uninfluenced by the holidays and it was a typical quarter, that's still ~50k in the year. Still a ways to go to 250 billion. Hell, that's still less than 1/5th of 274,000.

Re:LOLgasm

[thinkwaitfast]

Two words: statistically insignificant.

What this website is striving to become.

Re:LOLgasm

[freeze128]

In a related story, my sex life is booming -- there was a 100% increase from 2015 to 2016. (Got some twice last year, versus once the year before.)

Congratulations on the discovery of your other hand.

Re:Cassettes are dumb

[PPH]

My shirt pocket disagrees with you.

The only thing cassettes are good for nowadays

[darkharlequin]

Is feeling the pain of having to save and load data for my TI99/4A and tandy PC4 pocket computer on cassette. I imagine it will be a lot like toggling in bootstrap code to an Altair 8800: do it a couple times and you're gonna throw a rom in there....

Re:The only thing cassettes are good for nowadays

[XMadtowner]

Freakin 4a man, hand still hurts from hitting that damn function key for the question mark.

Re:The only thing cassettes are good for nowadays

[thinkwaitfast]

Toggling in bootstrap code is sooo much more painful than loading from a cassette. Not that there isn't significant pain there either.

Re:In this economy?

[Immerman]

>For a machine that will likely have had no maintenance and many consumable parts?
In that case it's probably not in good condition - in which case I agree completely. There's no accounting for what collectors deem worthy of spending obscene amounts of money on. Heck, some idiot in Victorian England(?) supposedly traded an entire mansion for a handful of tulip bulbs.

Though I would also point out that anything still in good working condition after 25 years of use is probably one of the statistical outliers in the quality control spectrum and may well continue operating well indefinitely. Parts - that's a whole different issue, but a surprising number can be replaced without much effort from modern parts intended for other things, often with better performance.

Oh, no, not this again

[arensb]

I get the nostalgia and novelty value of using old media. I even understand liking LPs because at least they had decent-sized art and liner notes. But cassettes? --ing cassettes?
I've written about this before, but basically, cassettes combine the worst aspects of LPs and CDs.

Makes sense

[AndyKron]

Makes sense to me. People are voting for the shittiest person to be our president in history, and buying the most shitty recording medium ever invented.

Re:In this economy?

[Grishnakh]

I disagree about the physical clutter bit; I actually like having the real CDs for my music. I buy stuff on CD, then rip it to Ogg to be used on my various devices. However, there's some giant differences from cassettes:

1) CDs actually have excellent sound quality, better even than the MP3 digital downloads sold at places like Amazon.
2) CDs don't degrade when you play them.
3) CDs come with booklets that frequently have the lyrics, artwork, etc. Of course, cassettes do too, but theirs suck because the format is different. CD booklets are a nice format that's about 1/4 the size of an old LP booklet, and has a nice square aspect ratio. Cassette inserts have a terrible aspect ratio and (at least back in the 80s/90s when I used to see stuff sold both ways and was able to compare) is usually missing a lot of stuff compared to the CD version.

But you're absolutely right that there's no rational reason to use cassettes. There's absolutely nothing better about them compared to other formats. They're awful; the size is terrible, the sound quality is terrible (it was terrible even when they were current; I remember well the tape hiss problem), they wear out, you can't skip tracks, you have to rewind them, etc. This truly is a case of simple retro hipsterism, nothing more.

cassettes?

[jjbenz]

I thought releasing stuff on cassette was a death/black metal thing.

Member Berries

[nwaack]

Berry One: 'Member cassettes?

Berry Two: Yeah, I 'member!

Berry One: Yeah, I 'member too. Cassettes sucked donkey balls.

Berry Two: Yeah, sure did!

8 Tracks will be next

[Bratch]

Since vinyl and now cassettes are coming back, what's next, the 8-track? I still have some Freddy Fender and Boston tapes that might play. clunk clunk

Hollorinth Cards abd Punched Paper Tape revival?

[shubus]

As long as we're going full-tilt, let's go all the way....no microprocessors needed!

Re:In this economy?

[TemporalBeing]

Neither do MP3s. And the quality's better. But, I guess they're not "tangible."

Well...let's see an uncompressed, unfiltered, band-unlimited, DRM-less analog audio stream from a cassette, or a compressed, filtered, band-limited CD or MP3?

Yeah...LPs and Cassettes are coming back b/c of how the CDs and MP3s are getting cut.
- Frequency bands deemed to high or low are cut off - removing high pitches and low pitches that while you may not be able to *hear* you can feel in some senses.
- Filters take this to another level and can often degrade it; sometimes these are used to keep people from copying them as extracting from the CD may add pops, glitches, etc (yes, I have a CD that way - no matter how good I rip it it sill has pops, etc b/c of the watermarks due to the filters applied).
- Compression is also applied, and usually is lossy. AAC, IIRC, was better than MP3 b/c it was lossless, but even then - CDs are compressed typically with lossy compressions.

Do yeah - digital tracks could be better than LP and Cassette but often aren't b/c of everything done by the studios. Yes, you can skip a lot of that stuff but then you get a lot less audio on CDs or the MP3s/AACs get to be a lot larger.

Re:In this economy?

[tsotha]

Yeah, it really is solely about retro hipsterism. Cassette tapes were a big improvement over reel-to-reel players, but they're crap compared to what we have today.

Re:In this economy?

[TemporalBeing]

CDs should be better in every aspect than an LP/Cassette...but they producers typically cut out a bunch of stuff that ultimately makes them inferior. And there are ways around each of the issues you mentioned - hiss was essentially dead space when the volume was turned up too loud.

Personally, I've got a bunch of LPs and Cassettes I want to digitize, and they'll all be better than any CD I could buy.

Re:In this economy?

[hey!]

Speaking as one who lived through the period you are talking about, 8 track never really took off, except in cars. Cassettes were already big deal when I was in high school, and I graduated in '79. They just hadn't peaked yet.

In the 70s Chromium Dioxide tapes and Dolby started to appear on home stereo cassette decks, and by the end of the decade 8 tracks were largely displaced in cars by cassettes.

The thing that really made cassettes take off, however, was the Sony Walkman. That made it possible for the first time to listen to your choice of music, with reasonable fidelity, any time you wanted to. Around the same time boomboxes came in.

Re:Cassettes are dumb

[thinkwaitfast]

You could record on cassette, but not on vinyl. My friend and I used to make comedy programs on cassette, a la Dr. Demento in early grade school years.

Re:I suppose it was Guardian of the Galaxy that ..

[freeze128]

With all the alien technology in that movie, you would think that he would have found some way to transfer it to memory crystal or whatever. Or, he could just fly to a location about 40 light years from Earth, turn on his radio, and receive the music "live". I bet he could even hear Casey Kasem!

Re:In this economy?

[Migraineman]

Well...let's see an uncompressed, unfiltered, band-unlimited, DRM-less analog audio stream from a cassette, ...

Clearly you've never mastered audio for cassette output. Typical compact cassette tape will start rolling-off around 12-14kHz; chrome tape will get you 16kHz; metal will get you close to 20kHz. Tape ain't the holy grail, as limitations of the medium impose compression, filtering, and band limitation (just in the analog domain.)

I just checked, and I can get 100 CD-Rs for $12 retail all day long. So my band can release a single on CD in an audio-CD format, or as a data disc with a raw uncompressed bit file. I can master this from the kitchen of my apartment, just like the article says.

In spite of the article claiming "this isn't another display of analog hipsterism," oh yes it is.

Re:In this economy?

[wyHunter]

Physically having media on which intangibles such as computer programs or music is recorded IS a good thing. No one can dispute your ownership of it. With download items, they can be fetched back off your device, as Amazon did with Orwell's book, 1984.

Makes no sense to me

[duke_cheetah2003]

Cassettes degrade with every play. Much more so than vinyl, which can be played with a good player with minimal wear. Cassettes however... I used to use them a lot as a teen, they wear out pretty fast.

Think it's the same reason why 8-tracks really never saw a revival. That old school magnetic media is really crummy, and worn tapes don't sound better, they sound like crap. Nothing nostalgic about magnetic damage to the tape from repeated playback.

Personally, I'd only interested in original CD's if I was collecting an old format, since that high quality CD sound never degrades.

Re:Makes no sense to me

[hyades1]

You may be in for disappointment. The sound might not degrade, but depending on manufacturing quality and how it's stored, the CD itself can break down with age.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/08/18/340716269/how-long-do-cds-last-it-depends-but-definitely-not-forever

Re:In this economy?

[wyHunter]

8track never took off for recording your own music, but I assure you, it was big for purchasing music to be played at home.

Re:In this economy?

[gnick]

Well...let's see an uncompressed, unfiltered, band-unlimited, DRM-less analog audio stream from a cassette, or a compressed, filtered, band-limited CD or MP3?

I don't think any recording medium offers unlimited frequency bands, but CDs and MP3s do a pretty good job of covering the audible range. Most cassettes don't even come close.

I have a CD that way - no matter how good I rip it it sill has pops, etc b/c of the watermarks

Methinks the problem isn't with magic watermarks.

Re:In this economy?

[Hognoxious]

I saw a 1980s wedge shaped JVC top loader out on garbage day, but I had to rush somewhere and by the time I got back it was gone.

Looked in decent condition, but even if it didn't work I could have put a pi inside it ;-(

Mix Tapes Get you Laid

[bryanbrunton]

If you make just the right mix tape for that special girl, there is a 102% chance of sex later that day.

What is so difficult about this to understand?

Re:Mix Tapes Get you Laid

[avandesande]

So you are dating a girl with a cassette player? Or does she use it as a sex toy....

Re:In this economy?

[Hank the Lion]

I used to get the Maxell high bias tapes...can't remember the exact model, but those sure sounded good for the day

Maxell XL-II / XL-IIS?

I mostly used TDK SA-90. Very good sound for the price.
Still have two Nakamichi decks that I haven't used in years, but I still have tapes with music that I cannot find anywhere else, so I will play them again one day...

Re:In this economy?

[oddaddresstrap]

"... meaningless without giving the base number ..."

From the report the article was based on:
"There were 11,489 cassettes purchased during the Holiday Season (an increase of 140% over 2015)".

Re:In this economy?

[mrbester]

I have a Spiritualised CD I can't rip because the drive in my laptop doesn't recognise it as being in a valid format. Plays fine in a crappy old stereo, though. It's not on any peg-legged parrot wielding sites I searched for probably that reason. I think I've still got a 20yo old IDE CD-ROM lying in a drawer somewhere that might manage it.

Re:In this economy?

[Hognoxious]

He might have been an idiot but if you asked him the date he'd probably give an answer that was out by less than a couple of centuries.

And he might not have been an idiot at all. At the right point in the cycle he could have sold them the next day for two mansions and a slightly shabby castle.

In short ...

[OrangeTide]

Yesterday I sold 1 lemonade. Today I sold 3, that's a 200% increase in sales!
If we follow the slope of the line we'll be selling trillions of lemonades by the end of the month. (205,891,132,094,649 if I've calculated that right)

And this has already been covered elsewhere.

Re:Tapes are big in prison

[OrangeTide]

Also you can turn a portable tape player into a tattoo gun.

Re:In this economy?

[Hognoxious]

Even if you want your music to pass through a "make it sound like shit" filter

Without googling, I just know that such a thing exists.

There's definitely an equivalent for photos.

Re:In this economy?

[kimvette]

It probably has a shitty DRM track to prevent your PC from "seeing" the music tracks. If you see a data track, look carefully at the disc under various lights and if you can identify the data track, black it out with a permanent marker (if clone cd, etc. fail) and then try ripping it. See: http://club.myce.com/f3/anothe...

Re:In this economy?

[Bearhouse]

I mostly agree, but back in the day both my (high-end admittedly) home and car cassette players had a "skip track" function.
They searched for the silences between tracks, (so useless for some classical music pr jazz etc. arrangements), but otherwise worked, albeit slowly.
I listened to stuff recorded from records using high-quality tapes and Dolby B. In a noisy environment like a car, was fine.
In the home studio, not so much...

Re:In this economy?

[TWX]

This sounds about right when I think back to the titles that my parents had. Stuff from the sixties was mostly on LP. Stuff from the seventies was a mix of LP and 8-track. Stuff from the very late seventies and eighties was on cassette.

Cassette was popular because it was small and because the physical media was reasonably durable compared to 8-track and its propensity to come apart at the glued seam. You could store at least half-again as many cassettes in the car for road trips. The audio quality wasn't the greatest but being able to have a dozen tapes in the glove compartment or center console to cycle through made up for it. It was also the first format that was easily portable, we had several knockoff-walkmans when I was a kid because it was an easy and cheap way to keep us entertained.

There is no reason to resurrect the cassette other than nostalgia. Having had to deal with tape decks in cars that ate tapes I have no problem stating that CD was much better, and solid state media is even better still for those stereos that accept flash media or USB media.

Re:In this economy?

[Hognoxious]

To do that it has to play the cassette at a speed faster than it was designed for. Must cause wear, if it doesn't actually break or stretch it.

Re:In this economy?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I've got 2000 Toyota Camry for sale right right now. Adjusted for inflation from what I paid new 2000 ($24,000) at half price (adjusted) that comes to $16,000. Current blue book is about $3000.

Does it have a functioning tape deck?

Re: In this economy?

[thundercattt]

My 2006 VW Golf has a functioning tape deck. I use the tape to headphone jack adapter

Vintage polycarbonate

[RDW]

For about $2 apiece, tapes can be produced in small quantities much more quickly than vinyl records, whose own resurgence has slammed pressing plants with so much demand that a new record can take up to six months to turn around. And unlike with vinyl, musicians can produce new copies of cassettes in their apartment in a pinch.

Imagine the excitement when, in a decade or so, hipsters re-discover the antiquated 'CD' format...

Re:In this economy?

[thegarbz]

Everyone. Disposable income is simply income after taxes and social security. If you had no disposable income you'd be begging on the street for food.

You're probably talking about discretionary income, which is income after taxes, social security and basic living costs, but even then we're still talking about nearly everyone. You got cable? You have discretionary income? Mobile phone? Yep discretionary income.

Re:In this economy?

[jmccue]

I too lived through that era, graduating a couple of years before 'hey!'. I knew only 3 people who had 8-tracks and 2 was in their cars. Maybe the 'hippie' gen people (~10 years older than me) may have bought 8-tracks for home use, one cousin much older than me had one. Outside of that, everyone had Vinyl at home.

BTW, after seeing how 8-tracks worked in my friend's car, I realized quickly they were a big waste of $ :)

This will just be a very short-lived fad

[JustNiz]

until people (re)discover that cassettes really are shit for many reasons, and nothing is going to improve that now.

Re:In this economy?

[thegarbz]

I've got 2000 Toyota Camry for sale right right now.

Wow, comparing well made consumer electronics to a car. ... That is a new level of typing without applying any thought.

Re:In this economy?

[LynnwoodRooster]

SNR, THD, and bandwidth of a CD is way beyond that of an LP or cassette. And I don't know anyone who's not using DAWs for mixing and editing - meaning it's all coming from the same basic source. There may be a few indie folks doing all analog and cutting tape on their 1" reels, but that number is probably in the dozens.

Re:In this economy?

[Enigma2175]

I was all prepped to dismiss this as hipster BS, but I did think the points about artist budgets was worth thinking over.

The cost of producing digital music is low, but the profit from selling a digital track is low too if selling through the main distributors. I can understand that if you're playing at venues or on the road, that selling digital tracks is a pretty crummy way to make a spare buck. So sure, if you can have cassettes ready to go, and folks are willing to buy them and can play them...maybe I can see a niche.

That said, a blank cassette costs $1-2 or so from my quick Google. A blank CD costs $0.30 or less. So I'm not sure why one "old" physical medium would be preferable over a cheaper one except for hipster cred. The article only mentions tapes vs vinyl. No mention of the lowly CD.

Exactly, the article claims it's not about hipsterism then spends the rest of the article comparing tapes to vinyl, which is all about hipsterism. The first quote in the article does nothing to refute that impression:

"It's nice to only be able to listen to what's in front of you, instead of having the entirety of music at your fingertips with Spotify and all that," says Molholt of his growing tape collection. "There’s also something warm and fuzzy about tapes to me, maybe in a nostalgic kind of way."

So he's saying he likes it because of limited choice and crappy sound reproduction. As you observe above, it makes no financial sense for any band to sell tapes at their shows rather than CDs. The only reasons to sell tapes would be nostalgia (for the oldsters) and being retro-hipster (for the younguns). Tapes have bad sound, are prone to breakage (both the tapes themselves and the machines used to play them) and cost more than CDs. I think I'll continue to get my music in a digital format and leave the tapes to the highly impressionable and the member-berry addicts.

Re:In this economy?

[LynnwoodRooster]

To put that in perspective, in the same time period, there were about 240 million streams of Black Beatles by Rae Sremmurd alone. Pandora had 5.4 billion hours streamed in Q3, 2016, which would be about 470,000 times more than the cassettes sold (assuming 60 minute cassettes). And that's just Pandora, not including all the other streaming services.

Cassettes are a tiny little drop in a thimble used to fill the swimming pool. They are irrelevant. But I get it - hipster! Now get me my mustache wax and we're good to go, as soon as I can pull on my skinny jeans and flannel shirt...

Re:In this economy?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Only because people have permanently dropped out of the work force. The labor force participation rate is as low as it has been in 2 generations. And creating McJobs and part-time work doesn't quite make up for the loss in full-time, gainful employment. Thus the push for "living wage" we see popping up all over the place, because people are trapped with either no job, or entry level jobs and cannot climb the ladder - the ladder rungs above are full.

Cassette sales up 140%

[camg188]

140% of almost nothing is still almost nothing.

Re:In this economy?

[camg188]

Number 1 reason cassettes were popular: you could record to them yourself.
Vinyl ruled most of the 80's. Cassettes allowed you to make your own mix tape for home, walkman or car. Prerecorded cassettes never came close to vinyl sales, except maybe with truck drivers, and I bet most of those were 'best of" mix tapes.

These people are so behind the times

[anarcobra]

I only use wax cylinders for my music listening needs.
I guess all those people who were 12 when cassettes were in are having their midlife crisis now?

Re:In this economy?

[Sique]

No, he didn't. Compact Cassettes were invented in 1963 by the dutch company Philips, and in the 1970ies, they were everywhere. I was born in 1970, and as long as I remember, we had a cassette recorder at home. I also remember all the cassettes my father had in his box with his recordings, which were called something like "Songs 1975" or similar. We never had an 8-track though. My father just commented once during a movie where you could see someone putting a cassette into his car's stereo, that this was an 8-track, the first time I ever heard about it.

Re:In this economy?

[Sique]

The maximum signal-to-noise ratio you can get from a cassette tape is between 60 and 65 dB (depends on the type of tape, Fe, Cr, Ferrochrome, Metal). The CD offers 96 dB. A cassette tape is really, really band limited. Above 16 kHz, it won't record anything meaningful. Below 50 Hz the same. A tape has not enough band reserves to even record VHF radio while preserving quality.

Re:In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

IIRC some fool traded 'Carlsbad' beer (the company) for two tulip bulbs just before that bubble popped.

Some idiots are lucky, doesn't make them not idiots. Trying to time a bubble is an idiots game.

Re:In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

Cassette players were disposable. Sure you can focus on Nakamichis, but 99.9% of the market was junk made by Matsushita.

Re:In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

Remind us all, how much did those Nakamichi decks cost new? $1000?

Re: In this economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ZX-7 was approx $1500. The ZX-9 was north of $2k. I have both, they're fantastic. The Dragon is fantastic for playback, the ZX-9 has the advantage for recording. The hands-down, no comparison ultimate is the Nakamichi 1000ZXL. If you buy one today, be prepared to shell out $4k minimum.

Re:In this economy?

[Hylandr]

Cassette players were disposable. Sure you can focus on Nakamichis, but 99.9% of the market was junk made by Matsushita.

FTFY

Re: In this economy?

[Hylandr]

To add some context to that price you could buy a VW bug in 1968 for just shy of 2k.

http://www.adclassix.com/ads/6...

The compact cassette became popular for automobiles in the early 60's.

You could buy a high end tape deck for more than the cost of a brand new car.

Imagine spending 25k or more on a tape deck today, and you see what the value really looks like.

Re: In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

To be fair, everything Nakamichi made was that overpriced. Also willing to bet those were early/mid 80s prices,

They were the best cassette players, no belts, everything direct drive with its own motor. Still not worth the money IMHO. Kind of wanted, but always had something better to spend the money on.

Re:In this economy?

[Nethead]

Like hey! I'm class of 79 also. I did kind of like the semi-random access of 8-tracks with the four position track selector.

Broadcasting had a similar format known as carts where were played in cartdecks. It was a three track at 7.5ips for a stereo format with one track for the stop and start tones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: In this economy?

[Hylandr]

everything direct drive with its own motor

Did it have segregated power supplies to prevent the motor noise from getting into the audio too, or did it whine like a beast when there was nothing on the tape it was trying to play?

Re: In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

You know it. Japanese in perfectionist mode. Audio circuitry in a Faraday cage, next to the heads.

Re:In this economy?

[Blaskowicz]

A shame that Mini Disc died a slow boring death. Due to Sony the electronics company and Sony the music/media company being in a cold war, it didn't see adoption as a floppy replacement, imagine that, able to replace floppies (100x bigger) and cassettes at the same time, a decade before USB thumb drives. A data version did exist, incompatible on purpose with audio discs and/or drives, but it could have been compatible and flooded 3"1/2 computer bays.

In 2004 they made a 1GB version, which would still hold quite enough FLAC or Opus audio today, or even H265 or H264 video.

Re:In this economy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a better thread on how to defeat Key2Audio protection

Or just look at the picture and you can see the ring that you blot out with a marker.

Re:In this economy?

[Blaskowicz]

Yes but the point is not to have to use a fucking computer with a mouse or touch screen.

Hoping those hipsters learn about music on hard drive or SD/USB and winamp clones or other at least, because the younguns and even not-so-younguns only listen on youtube and over "services". Having to have internet and remember every song title or artist name is even worse than having a few GBs or dozen GBs right there on local drive. And in 2002 we didn't have to make do with 16GB or less storage.

Re: In this economy?

[samkass]

A headphone jack? How retro!

Re:Cassettes are dumb

[djinn6]

MP3 and FLAC assume some sort of digital storage media.

And we should ignore digital media because...?

You can probably fit 50 micro-SD cards in the space of one cassette. At 256 GB each, they hold enough music for 2.5 years of non-stop playback at uncompressed CD quality.

If you actually want something big to look at and hold, then just attach your micro-SD card to a cardboard box of your choosing, then print out some fancy album art and decorate the box with it. Personally, I would consider that even more hipster than cassettes or vinyl since it must be hand made rather than mass produced. Bonus points for chopping down your own tree for the cardboard.

Re:In this economy?

[thegarbz]

Anything that is still working now is not disposable.

Things To Do With Cassette Tapes

[cstacy]

You can't stick a pencil in a USB stick and twirl it around.

Well, not if you want to plug the USB stick back into anything ever again.

Re:In this economy?

[umafuckit]

They are selling for as much used as I paid for them new 25 years ago. http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html...

Are they actually selling for that? Those are all "buy it now", so it could be that they're all chancers and are having a hard time selling. There are no auctions.

This too shall pass

[thisisauniqueid]

This too shall pass. The days are numbered for any old-timers that are embracing such an inefficient and clumsy medium for nostalgic purposes -- and for hipsters embracing old technology to be retro.

distribution

[sad_]

one of the reasons tfa lists as contributing to the cassette revival is that it is cheap for artists to make copies. because cd's are so expensive? i can't imagine cd's would be more expensive then an empty tape. and a music cd bruns in what? a few minutes, each cassette copy takes a lot more time, even with hight speed copy and all that nonsense.
Also, what is the point? Who is there left in this world which still has a cassette player you can distribute your 'cheap' copy to?

Niche use case

[sjbe]

I'm an indy musician. I don't have a lot of cash, and I don't have a lot of sales. Unit for unit, on small runs, cassette tape is WAY cheaper than any other medium.

The fact that it is cheaper for YOU doesn't mean it follows that it is the best choice for your customers unless you have very specific sorts of customers. You have to show that there actually is demand for it in the cheaper format. Cassette tape players are no longer as readily available as they once were so someone who uses them either has one left over from the old days or they've made a conscious decision to seek out the technology. In either case they probably have enough disposable income to afford something more modern if they want it. If they aren't willing to pay more then it probably says more about the market value of your product than it does their ability to pay for it.

But yes, from a marketing and artistic standpoint, having a physical product on offer for those who want it is important, and no, streaming and digital downloads alone don't satisfy that need.

Personally if the only physical product you offered me was a cassette tape I'd be looking around to find out where I wandered through the time machine. I don't even own a cassette player anymore (got rid of my last one probably 15 years ago) so you'd be offering my a physical product I cannot use. Offering cassette tapes either means you have a VERY niche (and probably old) audience or you are marketing to hipster douchebags who get a kick out of old-timey technology that sucks in reality.

Yes, I was around for cassettes the first time. I was around before CDs. I know all the arguments, and have lived through them. Your casual dismissal is just incorrect.

If my dismissal was incorrect then we would still be buying cassette tapes and you'd still see music from the major labels offered on them non-ironically and they'd still be getting installed as OEM equipment in cars. The simple fact is that we are not. Analog cassette tapes fell out of favor for extremely good reasons. If you've found a small pocket of people who still want to bother using them then good for you but let's not pretend it's a format we should be seeking to go back to or that it has any sort of use case that isn't a very tiny niche.

Tapes suck

[sjbe]

Even re-releases were affected and I think it's the main reason why vinyls are still here.

Vinyl records are still a thing because of "audiophiles" who like to pretend that they have special hearing powers the rest of us don't and hipster douchebags who like the idea of using what amounts to steampunk technology to seem superior and "edgy". Acoustically vinyl is better than cassette tape but that's pretty much the definition of damning with faint praise.

Considering cars with casette players are still available (yes, 2nd hand, I know), some may choose that compromise.

Nobody buys a car because it has a cassette player and they certainly don't base their music library around the fact that they are buying cars that are probably >10 years old. There hasn't been any cars sold with a cassette player as OEM equipment since 2010 and most dropped the equipment long before that.

As for "sucks on SO many levels", I just hope you don't base that on unmaintained cheap players and casettes

No I base it on several decades of having to live with tapes. I'm old enough to pre-date CDs (heck I pre-date the Sony walkman) and there were very good reasons why the market stampeded to CDs and dumped tapes decades ago.

Did you lose the adapter?

[sjbe]

But if you have the new iPhone, you won't be able to plug in the adapter either.

That would be true if they lose the 3mm-to-lightning adapter that comes standard in the box with every iPhone.

Re:Did you lose the adapter?

[sound vision]

Well, hopefully they never need to use their phone and charge it at the same time. I dunno, maybe Apple offers yet another adapter that lets you charge and use audio out at the same time. At a perfectly reasonable cost I'm sure.

Re:In this economy?

[Big Hairy Ian]

Hipsters

It's not always about high fidelity

[Analog Junkie]

As a long time (I start Medicare this year) low-fi audiophile, I wanted to bring up a couple points on the topic. Cassettes are not always used as a source for music. Many of us are into recordings of the spoken word and cassettes have always had enough fidelity for that. I've been a collector of radio programs (anything from the 1920s to present) for many years and cassettes (and reel-to-reel) have been well-suited to that hobby. That said, yes, I am digitizing my collections for both backup and random-access purposes but I still do use my cassette playing equipment (Nakamichi and Sony) for casual listening. Regarding 8-track tapes, yes, they were really the best solution for the automobile application in their day. But I would like to mention they had a competing format, the 4-track cartridge. The technology was similar to the 8-track except that, unlike the 8-track cartridge with contained the pinch roller, in 4-tracks the pinch roller was in the player and inserted itself into an opening in the bottom of the cartridge when it was placed into the player. Also, the 4-track and only 2 program selections as opposed to the 8-track's 4. I have a working combination 4- and 8-track player by Muntz mounted under dash in my 1959 Volvo. BTW, one can still buy belts for these players and repair parts (foil splicing tape, pressure pads, etc.) for the cartridges.

Re: In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

Imperfect, just better than anything else yet tried.

Re:In this economy?

[HornWumpus]

People do strange things all the time. Some people collect old French cars...

Spending $500 in time, disassembling a crappy cassette player to replace all the belts, makes no sense. In the end, it will still sound like very low data rate MP3 plus hiss.

Who knows, VCRs could be next. Noisey SD pictures being 'warmer' and all.

Re:Cassettes are dumb

[PPH]

And we should ignore digital media because...?

Because the article is about people switching back to an analog format. And the question was: Why cassettes? And my answer was: Pretty good form factor compared to the alternatives for analog.

Re: In this economy?

[Coren22]

You might want to look into a service. I don't know much about 4-track stuff, but it looks like this company might be able to help you:

https://www.larsendigital.com/...

IMHO.The nervous system likes a bit of noise

[bdwoolman]

I was pleased to read that some of the tape enthusiasts saw the lack of fidelity as a feature not a bug. Music can be enjoyed in very low fi. Over an AM radio for example. And Old 78s of Opera and Jazz are prized. I think the appeal of vinyl is in the warmth that comes with just a taste noise. Not noisy noise, just a little. Like Vaseline on a lens. Or an old faded print. Tube amplifiers produce warm sound with power to boot. We like white noise: ocean sounds; an air conditioner humming away on a hot night. The thrum of a diesel as one shoos through the night dozing in one's first class coupe.

You know this made me glad I kept those old cassettes and the 80s vintage stereo to play them on. Think I'll spin up some Blondie.... maybe Prince.

Re:In this economy?

[default luser]

Correct AC.

The Walkman killed LP slowly, and the CD finished both off rather quickly.

But the Walkman had enough power to make tape sales higher than LP by 1983

Re:In this economy?

[mrbester]

It isn't recognised as even having a filesystem. Don't know how they did that.

Re:speaking of component decks...

[Miamicanes]

Try Googling for a company that markets specialty decks to libraries, colleges, and museums. The price will probably blow you away, but cassette technology is sufficiently low-tech that someone with the right machine tools (or maybe a good 3D printer) could almost build them as one-off coture items in a garage.

Most old cassette decks still around are nonworking... pre-1997 decks mostly fail due to snapped belts, late 90s/early 2000s decks mostly fail due to bad capacitors or shoddy construction. And if you DO find one that works, prioritize your tapes for capture, because there's a good chance that any working belt that's left is literally hanging on by a thread and can snap at any time.

The good news is, if you find a nonworking pre-2000 deck, you can almost certainly repair it yourself if you can figure out where to buy replacement belts. The bad news is, finding the OEM part number of those belts, or even their exact dimensions, can be REALLY HARD because they're so old at this point, the service manuals are no longer readily available, and few of those manuals ever ended up being archived online because they pre-date .pdf. Personally, I'm kicking myself for throwing away my broken Sony component cassette deck a few years ago... in retrospect, it was probably just a snapped belt, and mechanically, decks of that quality basically don't exist anymore as new products (with the possible exception of ultra-ultra-ultra-expensive decks made for archivists).

Re:In this economy?

[inline_four]

I suggest you track down source material and not constrain yourself to the news summary. The article links to the original BuzzAngle Music report for 2016, which mentions this:

There were 11,489 cassettes purchased during the Holiday Season (an increase of 140% over 2015).

Re:In this economy?

[new500]

Wow, I still have a Nakamichi CR-7A 110V US lead, low mileage, second user, i storage here in London UK...

I paid quite some for it, none were easily available at all and I had reasons to be picky also, so I paid well over... yet stillI would be amazed to attain the current eBay ask for a current equivalent condition deck.

I see high at 2,300 and a live bid at 1200 due to close Saturday night...

sorry the 1200 seems to be a buy it now price...

that seems about OK really, but that seller offers no condition information

_holy cow, neither does the seller asking 2.4 kilobucks guve up any condition description other than cosmetic!

That's insane, these decks were twitchy - the Dragon wowed listeners more that it could sound good and be a tape deck, and was demanding as heck to get rolling with bias and the rest... everyone dreamed of a Dragon in my day... the one I have is the lesser beat but automates so much and simply doesn't expose the twiddling possibilities to the user .. forgive me my memory is strangely better of the glossy brochures I begged for as a kid, than my having and operating the Nakamich CR7-A in my home.

Why is that? I dunno but i sure guess it was simply unable to fulfil my teenage dream. Since then I have been spoiled with studio mastering gear - or rather the results of in the studio, it's not my field I'm marketing but my late biz partner was serious in music management, and I am still a frustrated engineer who reads TapeOp magazine like it's a top of shelf excitement I can't let my mom know I got... (anyone remember Stuio Sound & Engineering magazine? I can't even find reference to it. That was a insanely high brow publication I genuinely learned enough from to float around a music world full of proper big name people surround my partners' clients, and get taken for being a engineer/producer if I was not tempted to try to impress. Generally whatever did happen to magazines you could learn things from? Pro audio mags are terrible glossy ads now with no clue what a reverb is even used for in their reviews. I glean good things from GearSlutz forums but I studied EE for audio amateurishly stemming from a solid foundation, so I can filter fairly well... any hints or leads on good places to differentiate tech & technique from technique dictated by tech that the user doesn't understand, I'd be very grateful for... reverbs are a tough one for describing in words, some of the best members at GearSlutz are not native English speakers and take pains to describe well, but I crave a take on the effect in-chain: how do fiff freqs tail or clip? how long does a tail still comprise discernible signal before it is purely reverberating energy mushed by the synthetic environment or decay.. how much of what can be discerned feeding back at differing time on long delays... and a host of things that might mean you apply this reverb dead last or might indicate it will respond to more processing (eg dynamics rarely good idea post but it can work well) /frankly i never got any real idea about any kit since Studio Sound went off the shelves - it's worse today (or better for kit churning sales?) because there are less acoustically good places to listen and too many rack units of effects / processing: it frustrates me tomsay the least to read top pros experss the merits of a device solely in adjectives without using any concrete nouns regarding the device's actio on the signal that they are decsribing as sonorous, spatial, clear mids (which mids what voice or instrument what freqs, solo or blended feed?) and feeling like even the ones you know can't be bought are doing a infomercial.

Sorry for the rant - pls forgive a fast ageing cumudgeon.

However I suppose I am prepared to sell that Nakamichi CR-7A if it still runs well, I'd not sell ever as is. But I could not ask these ratesm- tell me you've a project, evcen if you have to flip it afterwards, but tell me it aint the money to you and I'll be happy to respond to any genuine inqu

What next? AM radio?

[nessman]

Time to start playing indie and Top-40 hits on AM radio stations? Really retro man!

If cd and digital files are so great

[burtosis]

How come they can't be fixed with tape and rewound with a pencil?

Re:Hipster

[burtosis]

Hipsters go for a much more shaped and trimmed beard than most Muslims do.

That and they don't tend to blow-up quite as often....

Not if the baristas get thier name wrong at Starbucks.

Re:In this economy?

[MercTech]

I bought a digitizing cassette player so I can convert music never released in digital form to digital for transportability. Cassettes were always a way to play music on the move and not high fidelity. I understand the audiophile appeal of vinyl. Cassettes are a head shaking bow to low fidelity portable music that should be left in the 70s and 80s. Anyone interested in my cassettes left over from the 70s and 80s?

Parts Help?

[Neuronwelder]

I tried, and for the life of me I can't find any cassettes. Also, where can you get a tape head, pinch rollers, and rubber belts, when your old one wears out?? Thanks for any info!