http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/re-rewind-are-cassettes-the-new-vinyl-sales-of-the-once-defunct-format-more-than-double-in-2017__21025/

I for one won’t be revisiting the days of the C120.

I’m happy with my new CD collection and player.

I’m not fast forwarding for anything!

I remember the heady day that my earnings rose high enough to switch from AR90s to SA90s.

Holy crap, it seems that sealed 90s SA90s sell for about £6 each, to actual morons, I should have some of those. WIN!

11-28 is still all you really need

Pft. One of the bands I listen to (you wouldn’t like them) released their latest album on 8 track.

Didn’t The Flaming Lips release an LP on 8 track?

What is 11-28?

Keep it real with reel to reel.

What is 11-28?

Also known as a ‘road’ cassette:

Ah the good old days. I remember 18-20 like it was yesterday,

Then it went wrong when SA80 replaced SLR

oh, my hearing aid…..

I’m going to start selling cassette rewinding tools* for a tenner each.

*Biros.

What is 11-28?

Side two

Awsumz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXfgYTqwQUw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXfgYTqwQUw

Bet the kids know how to shoot a video in landscape though.

Bet the kids know how to shoot a video in landscape though.

Get with the program grandad, snapchat encourages portrait style shooting, all the cool kidz do it. Landscape is like so 2010! 😂😘

If, like me, you had been a frequenter of the wonderful Bandcamp website, you’d realise that cassette releases have been making a resurgence for a while now. Some labels only release on cassette and the tapes sell out in hours.

I have bought a few, but they are weird old things, you look at them thinking “Which track is this then?” and you have no idea. Part of the appeal I suppose.

Now they’re getting stories about them on the “official chart” website, they’re obviously way too popular for me and I shall go back to Mini Disk. 😀

Holy crap, it seems that sealed 90s SA90s sell for about £6 each, to actual morons, I should have some of those. WIN!

I’ve still got a couple of really whizzy Metal format cassettes, with a cast metal frame, and clear plastic sides. IIRC they cost somewhere around £6 each back in the early 80’s. It’s why I’ve only got two, they were used for recording 12” singles onto, for maximum ooomph! I think they are TDK MA-X, but not sure, bloody good tapes when used with a good deck, like my Aiwa AD-F660, which has an EQ facility as well as Dolby B and C, with three heads for monitoring while recording.

Now they’re getting stories about them on the “official chart” website, they’re obviously way too popular for me and I shall go back to Mini Disk. 😀

I’ve been to gigs where cassettes are being sold, Half Man Half Biscuit still sell them. Still got my Minidisc recorder too… 🙃

I give it a year before Hipsters are pushing MiniDiscs back into the Charts.🙄

If, like me, you had been a frequenter of the wonderful Bandcamp website

Do you play the flute?

I can see Bauhaus making a comeback at this rate.

TDK MA-X

Ah before they started selling designer brands at reasonable prices

Ah before they started selling designer brands at reasonable prices

I saw what you did there, I was trying to avoid making a comment, but it was too good not to. 😁

It was the TDK MA-R C90, like this one;

Not a tape you’d want to get tangled the first time you used it, at that price!

does that mean I might be able to sell the Aiwa Cassette decks I’ve got sat in the attic taking up space?

A pretty flawed format. Not flawed in a particularly musical way either. The signal to noise and high end roll off combined with the mostly crap playback devices. Probably worse than vinyl, but for the ability to re-record until the tape stretches, twists, gets wound to tightly, unravels and snaps, not to mention gets noisier and nosier with use WTAF.

At least proper reel to reel sounded warm! cassettes didn’t offer the same fidelity! Absolute shite that has been superseded for mobile use, for the right reasons.

In 2017 alone, more than 80 albums have been released on cassette, driving almost 20,000 sales (19,399 units up to the first week of November).

Wow, amazeballs.

Minidisc was by far the best format. I miss my minidis player.

MiniDiscs are still great . My Biggie Smalls freestyles disc and recordings of various houseparties we had still get played a fair bit.

Tapes however can do one, although it was funny to see one ‘despooled’ all along a street for what felt like 100s of metres. You know , when the environment didn’t matter.

minidis

they’re not very good.

this just does not make sense – the only decent cassettes where ones you recorded on your home deck in real-time anyway, if your deck was something decent like a Nakamichi, and certainly not any bought cassette.

My girlfriends son buys records because he says they sound better than CDs, sometimes paying 4 times the cost of a CD, and then plays them back on a £70 quid USB turntable, FFS.

A bloke whose stuff I like, released his last album on (nicely packaged) cassette only – I bought it, then emailed him to ask if there was going to be an MP3 release… he said ‘no, but here’s a link to the download, don’t share it though’… So I have both formats, exclusive like 🙂

no, but here’s a link to the download, don’t share it though

what is the logic in that then? why not sell the download version in case someone with some sense likes his stuff ? you shouldn’t be forced to buy a cassette.

you shouldn’t be forced to buy a cassette.

I don’t think anyone was forced to buy it 😉

Here’s his message: “It will eventually be digital, yes……is being held back while I look for a potential label to help with vinyl.”

I think it’s just a way to release music on a cheap physical format, for people who like to own a physical item. Obviously, not so easy to release vinyl. Some buy because tapes are often ltd edition. You have to appreciate that a lot of people aren’t as hung up on sound quality as yourself and just like music. Not saying either is right or wrong, just the way it is.

@dezb its a way to be lo fi / DIY/ a little different.  you gotta be a real fan to have a tape/ tape player etc. Even though it isn’t really different anymore as we are discussing it on singletrack 🙂

last tape I bought was from a band called Male Bonding in 2010. Tape is shite though so it wont last.   Still 8 years and counting I guess

https://malebonding.bandcamp.com/track/split-cs-ibb001

I’ve still got some computer games on cassette – The Way of the Exploding Fist and a few others.

I’ve bought maybe a dozen new-release cassette albums/demos in the past 6 months. It’s still quite a popular format in the punk D.I.Y. scene.

You should make use of as many music medium-types as possible. There is no right or wrong, just opinion…

Just thought I’d post a picture of my first tape recorder.

Got if from Tesco Hypermarket (!) in Irlam.

Bought for my birthday in 1976. It cost £14.99.

Keep it real with reel to reel.

Did somebody say…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnKVkQahqco

You have to appreciate that a lot of people aren’t as hung up on sound quality as yourself

it’s not just sound quality though, tape is a very fragile medium that wears out every time you play it so it is really poor vfm.

And vinyl is even worse with the cost of some of it these days and the speed at which it must get damaged with all those cheap and poor record decks that people are using.

Retro is the new retro. It’s everywhere.

https://www.lomography.com/

that wears out every time you play it so it is really poor vfm.

I’ve got tapes from the 80s that still play ok. They’re ok value too, the new ones, as they are pretty cheap.

Who plays the same thing over and over, enough to wear them out, these days anyway?