The once popular cassette tapes are finally nearing their end

19 Jun 05 01:26 by Seán Byrne in category Uncategorized To news archive

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Just as the Vinyl Record has pretty much died off in the mid 90’s, the end of the cassette tape is coming close. So far cassette tapes have been in use since their perfection by Philips in the 1960’s and reached their peak in 1989 in the UK, selling 83 million tapes in the UK alone. Now this has fallen to just 0.9 million tapes sold last year. When the cassette tape was created, Philips decided not to charge royalties for it in order to ensure it quickly became accepted. Before the tape, reel-to-reel recorders and vinyl recording booths dominated the market.

Back in the mid 80’s, tapes accounted for 54% of global music sales. However one thing that has not changed was the worry that home taping was killing the music industry, just like today’s version of downloading. Just as we have CD recorders and MP3 players, back then most taped from Vinyl and carried portable cassette players and some created mixed compilations to tape. The Sony Walkman was market leader back then, just like how the iPod is now.

So far, the audio books are still driving cassette tape sales to some extent, with a third of these sold on tape in the UK. In some countries such as Turkey and India, cassette tapes are still selling very well with around 50% of audio sales still on tape. Due to decreasing cassette tape sales in the US, the US’s largest magnetic tape factory had ceased its production earlier this year.

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>Some 40 years after global cassette production began in earnest, sales are in terminal decline. From its creation in the 1960s through to its peak of popularity in the 1980s, the cassette has been a part of music culture for 40 years.

But industry experts believe it does not have long left, at least in the West.

The cassette may have hissed, been prone to wow and flutter, and often ended its life chewed in a tape deck, but it ruled for four decades before MP3s and downloads.

However, the cassette’s reign now seems to be over.

“Cassette albums have declined quite significantly since their peak in 1989 when they were selling 83 million units in the UK,” Matt Phillips of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) told BBC World Service’s The Music Biz programme.
“Last year we saw that there were about 900,000 units sold. It’s clear to see that cassette sales are dwindling fast.”

While it has been a long time since I handled a cassette tape, I do remember the days of making my own compilations. While the digital age may appear to make it simple to make home compilations, the one thing that is causing a serious problem is the music industry trying to put DRM and copy protection restrictions on music. As a result, we get compatibility issues, music only working on certain ‘compliant’ devices, different audio / DRM formats, legal issues against breaking copy-protection measures and so on. This mess and confusion simply did not exist back in the peak days of the cassette tape.

At the moment, we see that the music industry has gotten so concerned about piracy over P2P networks that they are constantly suing those who share copyrighted music. However, the only things that have changed since before the P2P age is how consumers got their music without paying for it. For example, vinyl to tape copying was the equivalent to today’s CD to MP3 copying. People gave copied cassettes to friends just as consumers do it with CDs today. Finally, some may say ‘But, there was no file sharing back then”. Well, consumers simply taped their favourite music from the radio instead.

Finally, the one thing that will likely keep tapes going for another while is dictation. If one wishes to correct a mistake they made while recording onto cassette, they simply rewind to before the mistake was made and continue taping. With digital voice recorders and especially those built into MP3 players, most only give the option to delete the whole recording and start over.

Source: BBC News – Technology

6 Comments

Juhuslik: Posts: 311; Posted on: 19 Jun 05 08:07

It was fun in the end of 80's and beginning of 90's to mess with tape. In that time first was possible to get CD in Soviet Union. Damn expensive was music CD. So it was taped maybe 100 or more times...

cynicalbastard: Posts: 480; Posted on: 19 Jun 05 11:00

A funny bit from the article: --------- New York music writer Joel Keller laments that personal computers have killed the mix tape star, and that the "drag and burn" method of creating compilation CDs is simply "less fun." "I liked it when I sat in front of my stereo, my tape deck, with a big pile of CDs, deciding on the fly which songs to put in what order," he said. "My play and record fingers got a little sore because I had to time it right. Listening to the song as it played, finding the levels - it seemed like more of a labour of love than it is it do CDs now." ------------- Cleary the guy is nuts :B There's no stopping him doing that now if he wants to re-live the glory days.

Roj: Posts: 434; Posted on: 19 Jun 05 15:37

I got my first tape deck in the late 60s. It was a Sony portable and it had two add-on portable speakers. It lived n my bedroom and on occasion was connected ot the family stereo. I graduated to a Teac before I reached the age of 14 after quickly learning the art of making my own tapes. That kicked off a serious love affair with audio that persists to this day. The main thing behind tapes was portability. They also drove me to buy vinyl because tape quality, despite the more exotic hardware offerings I gravitated to in later years, was still not as good as the original. Tapes spurred (at last count) some $70K in record purchases down through the years. Yes, that's right: Seventy Thousand Dollars. The greedy thieving bastards who run the music industry should take note of that. For all their DRM filth, copy protection rape of consumer rights and lawsuits which, let's face it, are essentially legalized extortion and strong-arming, it was a FREE and OPEN format that made them the prosperous force they are today. I urge each and every one of you to consider this the next time you get the urge to download from iTunes, buy a copy protected CD or one that installs software quietly on your system which strangles your right to do what you see fit with what you have paid for. They have spit in your face. Make sure you spit their own excrement back in theirs.

Roj: Posts: 434; Posted on: 19 Jun 05 15:41

""I liked it when I sat in front of my stereo, my tape deck, with a big pile of CDs, deciding on the fly which songs to put in what order," he said. " Hey, I still do this except that now I do it with my M-Audio Revolution, my Monsoon Planar Media 14s and various software tools such as MAD Frontend, Goldwave, Monkey's Audio, FLAC Frontend, CDex and Nero. Same mindset, different tools. The boy needs to take a lesson.

Rhelic: Posts: 302; Posted on: 21 Jun 05 21:27

Roj, $70,000 / 45yrs = $1,555 per year $1,555 / 12 months = $129 per month I would have never thought it could have added up that fast. And iirc when I was a kid in the 80s tapes were pretty cheap, well under $10, so I'm guessing they were only $2 or $3 in the 60s, wow, I can't even imagine the number of tapes you bought, sounds like... ALL OF THEM :P As a true audofanatic I don't blame you for buying everything on Vinyl for your home listening and duping to tape to for portability.
[edited by Rhelic on 21.06.2005 21:29]

dentman42: Posts: 648; Posted on: 22 Jun 05 00:28

I remember vinyl record albums ("33's", "Records", "Albums") being us $ 4.99 - and that seemed expensive. Then when CDs came out at more than twice the price, they said this was only until R&D costs were recouped and then they'd be as cheap as records and tapes. Well, record and tape prices went up a bit, but the price gap never closed even though CDs became much cheaper to produce than records or tapes... (Geez, I finally got a decent tape deck with Dolby C and HX pro and just a few years later, CD writers became affordable. I know I'm jaded now because I saw a high-end Sony tape deck with Dolby S and DBX for $20 recently and I was barely even tempted)

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