Cassette Tape Makes A Comeback

It looks like another format that was left for dead is making a dramatic comeback. Believe it or not, the cassette tape is selling better than it has in years, and new tape decks are again being made.

According to National Audio Company, the largest of the companies still involved in cassette manufacturing, the company sold nearly 10 million units last year (remember that vinyl only did 13 million with a lot more hoopla about it).

Of that number, a surprising 70% was actually production copies made for two of the major labels Sony and Universal, along with a few small indie labels. The other 30% were blank tapes.

The company sees such an upturn in cassette sales that it persuaded Teac/Tascam to reintroduce tape machines long out of production.

So who's buying most of the tapes? You'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't).

Just like vinyl, it's the under-35 crowd who's gravitating back to the format. After listening to digital music all their lives, they've found they preferred analog.

Although many have looked down on the cassette as an inferior playback format, a fresh tape in a well-aligned machine can actually provide surprisingly good performance.

That's too much to hope for in this new resurgence, but it's nice for people to experience analog audio once again.

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Record Store Day A Big Hit

The annual Record Store Day was held last Saturday and, as always, it was a big hit, setting a 12 year sales high.

Indie record stores recorded 532,000 album sales for the day, which represented more than 21% of all physical sales and almost 12% of overall sales.

It was an almost 50% increase from the week before, and many record stores reported that this one day was equivalent to 2 weeks of normal sales. Many stores even said that it was their best sales day ever.

Half of the vinyl chart slots for the week were occupied by records released specifically for the event, such as The White Stripes Get Behind Me Satan in the #2 spot, and Bob Dylan's The Basement Tapes at #6.

That said, the best selling release wasn't a vinyl record at all. It was Metalllica's cassette-only release No Life Till Leather, which sold 3,000 units.

While the heyday of the record store probably won't ever return, there is still some enthusiasm for physical formats and the stores that sell them. If only every day could be like Record Store Day, the music business would be in a much better place.

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Are Cassettes The New Vinyl?

Every time you think the novelty has worn off the resurgence of the lowly cassette, it seems to come roaring back again. As unlikely as it seems in this age of instant access libraries of millions of songs online, this technology from the last century still has some life.

The great Hypebot blog recently posted an article regarding the number of cassette-related articles found in a Google search, which showed the revival still gaining speed. That's difficult to quantify in numbers, since most units are distributed by micro-labels who only do limited runs and don't report to SoundScan.

That said, this report and video from the Wall Street Journal shows the mindset of the typical cassette buyer and seller very well.

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Cassettes Go To Prison

Cassettes may be an audio delivery platform from a different era, but just like vinyl, there's still a bit of life left. Believe it or not, there are still a number of indie record labels that provide limited editions of cassette releases (Baldy Longhair Records, Scotch Tapes, Cold Slice, to name just a few), but cassettes are now getting a new lease on life thanks to the New York prison system.

Now a New York marketing company that sells exclusively to prison inmates called Send A Package has made a deal with Universal Music Group to sell cassettes from artists like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Nas and Jadakiss to the inmates of New York. While on the surface this sounds completely ludicrous, it becomes a well-thought plan when you realize that prisoners aren't allowed to have CDs. Cassettes however, are allowed, and Universal is more than pleased to supply them with their favorite hip-hop from the present and the past.

Send A Package is unique in that it allows family and friends to send gifts to prisoners that are pre-approved and not subject to search by prison security. It's also a place where inmates can buy anything from food to magazines to clothing. The company buys the cassettes from UMG at $6 each, then resells them to inmates for $13.

Believe it or not, cassettes are still widely used throughout the world as in many cases that's all that's available for music delivery. While that usually applies to what we would consider the third world, it just goes to show that there's still a little bit of the third world right at home, and that some formats refuse to die.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Cassettes Making A Comeback?

According to an article in the Sunday LA Times, the lowly audio-cassette tape is making a comeback of sorts. The article states that there are a few record labels like Kill/Hurt, Not Not Fun, Bridgetown Records and Burger Records that use cassettes as a promotional tool of sorts, and actually sell out of short runs!

We all thought that cassettes were history and according to Soundscan, only 34,000 were soldin 2009, but it seems like there's enough of an appetite for new product, and there are enough tape machines still out there that work to constitute a market. In fact, M2 Communications (where Burger Records get their tapes duplicated at) state that they're currently duplicating being 6,000 and 10,000 a month.

The key to making this work is pricing - $6 per unit. Of course, short runs of only 250 (usually at a buck a copy cost) makes the outlay and the risk small, and also make it an exclusive piece of merch for the true fan.

Cassettes are actually not that bad a distribution medium in terms of reproduction quality. Sure, when they first came out in the late 60's the quality was pretty poor, but by the end of their reign the playback quality was surprisingly good. I remember taking a tour of a record pressing and tape duplicator and hearing some tapes off the line played back in the QC department and being shocked how good they sounded. The key, of course, was that their playback deck was aligned weekly, something that never happened in consumer decks.

While the return of the cassette tape is a short-lived fad that will be nothing but a sales blip (if that), it is a good example of thinking outside the box in terms of marketing. It also goes to show that in Music 3.0 almost anything works, even if it's low tech.

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