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dave walsh · 9th Nov 2019, 4:56 pm

Today's Guardian has a full page article "Rewind! Welcome to the cassette revival" featuring fifty odd examples in full colour. I know there have been regular features of this sort over the last 15 years or so re cassettes, vinyl and other "vintage" technology and even the author admits the tape revival is still modest "in the scheme of things" but it seems that at least 100,000 tapes will have been sold by the end of 2019-an amount not seen since 2004 apparently .

Two factors seem different to previous retro interest. High profile established artists are releasing work in this format and cassettes are being bought as collectables not just a cheaper audio format. There are parallels with the last, significant, vinyl revival, which is only just running out of steam, to some extent. It's claimed that music fans want something more tangible than a download [again] and that factories were "scrambling" to find more tape earlier in the year. All this chimes in quite neatly with the recent "Obsolete Techology That's Not" thread but I see that is closed. I'd commented on No 1 in the BBC link [The Pager] and Cassettes were No 3. Mods are free to add this in if that's thought useful or keep it separate.

Dave W

9th Nov 2019, 4:56 pm	#1
dave walsh Dekatron Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Ramsbottom (Nr Bury) Lancs or Bexhill (Nr Hastings) Sussex. Posts: 5,817	Back To The future with a C90 Today's Guardian has a full page article "Rewind! Welcome to the cassette revival" featuring fifty odd examples in full colour. I know there have been regular features of this sort over the last 15 years or so re cassettes, vinyl and other "vintage" technology and even the author admits the tape revival is still modest "in the scheme of things" but it seems that at least 100,000 tapes will have been sold by the end of 2019-an amount not seen since 2004 apparently . Two factors seem different to previous retro interest. High profile established artists are releasing work in this format and cassettes are being bought as collectables not just a cheaper audio format. There are parallels with the last, significant, vinyl revival, which is only just running out of steam, to some extent. It's claimed that music fans want something more tangible than a download [again] and that factories were "scrambling" to find more tape earlier in the year. All this chimes in quite neatly with the recent "Obsolete Techology That's Not" thread but I see that is closed. I'd commented on No 1 in the BBC link [The Pager] and Cassettes were No 3. Mods are free to add this in if that's thought useful or keep it separate. Dave W Last edited by dave walsh; 9th Nov 2019 at 5:03 pm.