Cassettes are making a comeback. No, really. Vinyl as a way of collecting and sharing music is beyond novelty in 2021. Now, the very tangible return of cassettes to the mainstream is fueled by one-part nostalgia and one-part affordability. Unlike their waxy counterparts, cassettes are pretty cheap to produce (as an artist) and purchase (as a […]
My parents had the coolest stereo set up in our living room when I was growing up. Two huge hi-fi speakers, an amp, a receiver, a turntable with an arm that allowed you to stack about five records so a new LP could drop down as the one before another ended. The pièce de resistance […]
Though he grew up in Minneapolis, Scott Campbell is a pretty classic New Yorker. He’s 45, living in Brooklyn, and working as an event producer. His company handles the annual World Trade Center 9/11 memorial, installing two lights that shoot into the sky where the Twin Towers once stood. He studied music in college, and […]
There are now over 13 million releases cataloged in the Discogs Database. Over 1 million of those are cassettes. The good ol’ fashioned tape is not as sought-after as vinyl, obviously, but the format is experiencing a resurgence in popularity recently thanks to reissues, new releases, and famous originals. Unlike the most-wanted cassettes on Discogs, […]
Cassette Week (formerly Cassette Store Day) is confirmed for October 11-17, 2020. Here’s everything you need to know. What is Cassette Week? Cassette Week is the evolution of Cassette Store Day. Started in 2013 by a handful of UK-based labels as an answer to Record Store Day for the cassette-collecting community, in recent years Cassette […]
It’s been over 40 years since the first Sony Walkman was available to consumers in Japan. Finally, there was a way to listen to music on the go. Carrying a stack of cassettes and spare batteries was a bit more of a hassle though. Although cassettes have not experienced the same resurgence in popularity that […]
Love them or loathe them, the humble audio cassette tape is having a moment. Cassette sales grew nearly 25% in 2018 after an increase of more than 50% in 2017 on the Discogs Marketplace. Let’s take a look into how to keep your cassettes sounding their best. For some cassette collectors, the thrill of finding […]
Any nascent musical genre spreads through word of mouth initially. Before the suits would come in and commodify a sound, you’d have buzz on the streets and — in past decades, anyway — DJs unearthing the hottest underground tracks. That was even truer for hip-hop than most genres. It was thoroughly rooted in live communal […]
By Brent Greissle, Discogs’ Discography Specialist Back by popular demand, I’ve been coerced into returning to my most talked about blog post, the time I shouted “Cassettes Suck” from behind a megaphone into a crowd and was met with righteous indignation. As predicted, a fair percent of readers never bothered to read beyond the title […]
If you’re one of those nostalgic hipsters or old-school heads collecting cassettes, thank National Audio Company. The Missouri-based business has been family-owned and operated since 1969, and today it turns out more than 10 million cassettes a year. It’s the world’s leading cassette duplicator and soon to be perhaps the only manufacturer of musical-grade magnetic […]
