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Cassette Album Sales in the US Grew By 23% in 2018 (billboard.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Thanks to such acts as Britney Spears, Twenty One Pilots and Guns N' Roses, along with soundtracks from the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise -- which boasts the year's top two sellers -- and Netflix's Stranger Things series, cassette tape album sales in the U.S. grew by 23 percent in 2018. According to Nielsen Music, cassette album sales climbed from 178,000 in 2017 to 219,000 copies in 2018. While that's a small number compared to the overall album market (141 million copies sold in 2018), that's a sizable number for a once-dead format. In 2014, for example, cassette album sales numbered just 50,000. But, 20 years before that, back in 1994, when cassettes were still very much a hot-selling format, there were 246 million cassette albums sold that year, of an overall 615 million albums.

5 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Superior sound quality, duh.

  2. What about 8 track??? by mspohr · · Score: 3, Funny

    I still have an 8 track player in my very old car... why can't I find any new music for it?

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  3. Cassette players by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is great news. Now if I could only get back my '82 Jetta so I could have something to play the cassettes on. I spent two weeks' pay on the sound system in that car and it fuckin' rocked. The car didn't really run all that great, and the heater didn't work, and one of the windows only went halfway down, but man I could bomb the bass in that little fucker. I loved that car. I'll bet if you could vacuum the upholstery you'd find a half-oz of some pretty decent weed I dropped there. It was green and had a 1.7 liter engine that supposedly could put out 74 horsepower, but I'm pretty sure most of those horses were pretty sick, because I really had to stand on that accelerator to merge onto the Kennedy Expressway. Good times.

    Now, if you wanna bring back my '75 Honda Civic wagon (also green) with the 8-track player, you'd really have something. I went away to grad school in New York in that bitch and I remember there was a track break smack in the middle of Heroin off Lou Reed Live. It used to drive me crazy. He'd sing "when the blood begins to..." and there'd be like this thunk and 10 second pause while switching tracks before he'd sing, "...flow". It was one of like 4 tapes I had when I left Chicago.

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  4. What I've heard by AndyKron · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've heard the distortion from a tube amp and cancel the distortion of the cassette. I've also heard the Earth is flat and vaccines cause autism.

  5. Guardians of the Galaxy, duh by Spy+Handler · · Score: 3, Funny

    Didn't you guys watch the movie? It was basically just a 2 hour advertisement for the cassette tape format.

    The sequel was also plugging the Microsoft Zune. I think the used Zune prices on ebay will be going up.