[Music] Cassettes

[studio150]

Amazingly UK Cassette sales were up 94% in the first half of 2019. Before you get too carried away that's 35,000 tapes or 0.2% of total album sales in the UK.

So are you one of the buyers that are returning to cassettes, and have you still got a tape machine to play them on, or just collecting.

Also who when they were at their height brought them over vinyl.

Personally I never brought pre-recorded tapes, and used blanks tapes to record mates albums to listen to, or to create mix tapes to play in the car, and of course as no doubt everyone did tape the charts and other stuff off the radio.

 

[Weststander]

In music buying since a nipper in the mid-70’s, I very rarely bought prerecorded tapes, I can only think of Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes single and Dvovak’s New World Symphony.

But TDK did incredibly well out of me ... I still have a large draw full of tapes from the radio or my own compilations from vinyl. I still have the Akai HiFi tape deck, fully working, from circa 1984 as part of my system.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I am accumulating quite a lot of cassette tapes rapidly at the moment. I subscribe to the Sacred Bones record label and alongside each vinyl they send I get a mix-tape from the artist; it is literally a cassette tape. I have nothing to play them on though.

And I at their height I used to buy cassettes. They were very popular back in the day, especially when the walkman came along. I remember buying ELO and Queen cassettes especially. I also remember cassingles and buying C30,C60,C90 Go by Bow Wow wow.

 

[Geestar]

People get carried away with nostalgia. I think I'll give the cassette a miss now a days

Sent from my TA-1020 using Tapatalk

 

[Weststander]

Thank you Dolby, they really did make a difference in reducing hiss.

 

[Nottseagull]

Also who when they were at their height brought them over vinyl.

Personally I never brought pre-recorded tapes,

'Brought' does not mean you've been buying!

 

[VAL1850]

Standard holiday luggage, Walkman and two boxes of cassettes to listen to on the beach, that was about half my total luggage....not forgetting the batteries....

 

[BensGrandad]

I thought that cassettes and even CDs were a thing of the past in my younger days. 78s then 45s then cassettes then CDs now all digital. I pods etc.

 

[BensGrandad]

I think we have largely transcended beyond ipods, Mp3's etc now too. We have now entered the age of cloud music with Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music and so on.

I still use my Ipod on holidays and in my car other than that it is Smooth or Classic FM on the radio.

 

[Stat Brother]

I think we have largely transcended beyond ipods, Mp3's etc now too. We have now entered the age of cloud music with Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music and so on.

Which is possibly why people now feel the need for a tangible commodity to own.

 

[maffew]

Happy days!!!!!

 

[Coldeanseagull]

I'm all cloudy now, but still have a loft full of these archaic music media things, which take up a lot of space (vinyl, tapes and cd's)

 

[The Sock of Poskett]

Have always had a few tapes knocking around, mostly from the days when my car had a tape deck. Seems to be a real surge in demand at the moment - some from the old house/hip-hop/techno crew (picked up a hefty box of tapes from the days of Sterns in a charity shop earlier this year), and others from old rock/prog fans (the ones that seem most collectable have the old paper labels by the way).
Still have a decent Yamaha tape deck as part of my system these days, and spent a happy hour decorating this afternoon listening to a tape of Sladest from 1973 (some of Slade's best stuff isn't the chart singles, in my view).
Good old mixtapes, eh?

 

[Thunder Bolt]

We've still got a perfectly good music system that plays vinyl and cassettes. It's over 25 years old.

 

[happypig]

I used to buy bootleg cassettes at record fairs, still got a few in the loft. There was also a company called Roir Records who produced albums on cassette only; I have releases by the MC5 & Johnny Thunders.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I used to buy bootleg cassettes at record fairs, still got a few in the loft. There was also a company called Roir Records who produced albums on cassette only; I have releases by the MC5 & Johnny Thunders.

I also used to buy live bootleg cassettes. Springsteen tapes were popular.

 

[beorhthelm]

sure i read the last maker of cassettes stopped recently, i was surprised they were still in production. it isnt a great format with sound levels, chewed tapes, though the tactile feel of the cassette was better than a CD.

 

[Easy 10]

Cassettes were absolutely essential for recording the top 40, and pirating Spectrum games. My pride and joy was my Philips MIDI triple-deck twin-cassette turndeck radio combi.

"And now from Akai, new metal taped cassette decks with Akai's reknowned GX Glass Head, guaranteed for seventeen and a half years"

I'm not kidding. Thats what the ad said. Guaranteed for 17.5 years. Quite WHY they were so specific, I have no clue. Imagine hitting 18 and it packs up. Dang it.

 

[Scotchegg]

A lot of smaller record labels and DIY bands have been priced out of pressing vinyl for several years now, ever since vinyl stopped being cheap and got trendy again. Cassettes were a necessity for a lot of bands if they wanted an album to sell on physical media. I'm sure that'll get trendy too and the move to CD will come back round eventually. Not sure where after that.. laserdiscs?

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I have a mountain of tapes of John Peel, Richard Skinner, Peter Drummond.....

Lots of 'rare' peel sessions.... but I have downloaded all I want from various sites. There is a site with countless full Peel progs....I now have many on iPOD.

I can still play tapes but never do. After I downloaded a pristine version of the one and only Again Again Peel session I realised they are redundant.

Also the sound quality is shite.

The cloud does not have all this stuff available though...