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Cassette tape sales are on the up

Sky News, May 2009

Three years ago, everyone was predicting the end for the humble cassette but something surprising is happening. Instead of withering - sales of blank tapes are on the up.

TDK, the market leader, said it had sold one million blank tapes in the first four months of this year alone.

"We're pretty surprised actually because tape sales seem to be holding up very, very well," TDK's Craig Hill told Sky News.

"We thought that they would tail off dramatically, year on year. In the last 12 months, we've seen a resurgence."

Tape players were everywhere 20 years ago. In the home, in the car, even on the move. Tapes were where we put our music.

By 1988, we'd bought over three billion of them. But the CD had been invented and pretty soon, it took over.

In 2007, sales of blank tapes had plummeted from 50 million a year to just 5 million.

Naturally, everyone thought by now the format would be dead and buried and the factories shut.

But instead - demand is increasing.

There are a few reasons for the rise, but the main one is lots of people still have players either in the car or at home.

Not long left for cassette tapes?

Not long left for cassette tapes

The cassette is facing erasure

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

Not long left for cassette tapes
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.

Why the music cassette has never died

Richard Goldsmith, of the upscale hi-fi geeksters’ paradise Audio Gold, dismisses the notion of a a dying format. “I’m not sure there’s any such thing,” he says. Cast your eye around his North London shop, and you can see why he might say such a thing. Walking past turntables and transistors that look like exhibits from a design museum, he shows me a cassette player priced at a bracing £450. It’s made by Nakamichi, who prided themselves on divining hitherto unimagined clarity from the humble C90

10 uses for audio cassettes

Sales of audio cassettes are dwindling, but what use is there for the estimated 500 million tapes gathering dust?

Cassette tapes were once at the cutting edge of personal music collections, offering portability and piracy.

The "mix tape" was a romantic rite of passage in the 1980s. Recording songs from the radio - or from another tape if you splashed out on a double-tape deck - to give to a loved one or a mate was a painstaking business. Fading out the music before the DJ butted in became an art form.

And the sound of loading computer games patiently from tapes to a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 will live long in the memory.

Giving up my iPod for a Walkman...

When the Sony Walkman was launched, 30 years ago this week, it started a revolution in portable music. But how does it compare with its digital successors? The Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell to swap his iPod for a Walkman for a week.

My dad had told me it was the iPod of its day.

He had told me it was big, but I hadn't realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

When I saw it for the first time, its colour also struck me. Nowadays gadgets come in a rainbow of colours but this was only one shade - a bland grey.

Remember the cassette? Mix tapes and mangled favourites in the car stereo ?

In 1989 Britain was a nation in love with the pre-recorded cassette. We bought 83 million that year. It was the peak of the little plastic music box's popularity.

Twenty years on, you would be forgiven for imagining the format was all but dead. The British Phonographic Institute says just 8,443 were sold in 2009.

But that number hides a new trend. In a digital age artists are turning to the cassette as an intriguing and challenging format - a ready-made frame for sound art.

In London, a tiny label called The Tapeworm has been quietly producing cassette-only releases since last summer, each one limited to 250 copies. Most have sold out.

"We do not view this as a dead format," says The Tapeworm's Philip Marshall. "We do not view this as something which does not have a place right now.

Death of the VCR

The death of the video cassette recorder appears to be in sight after the UK's largest electrical chain said it is to stop selling them.

Dixons will phase out VCRs due to the boom in DVD players, sales of which have grown seven-fold in five years.

It ends a 26-year love affair with a gadget which changed viewing habits by allowing people to leave home without missing their favourite programmes.

Dixons expects to sell its remaining stock of VCRs by Christmas.

The High Street retailer says demand for VCRs has fallen dramatically since the 1990s.

Record sales as Tapeline takes on the downloaders

December 22, 2009 ( Manchester Evening News )

A STOCKPORT business is recording its best figures for 13 years – as it enjoys the unlikely revival of the cassette tape.

Tapeline, based in Bredbury, is one of the few specialist cassette manufacturers left in the country.

And despite the rise in downloads dominating the music industry, business has been booming as record companies begin to release music on tape again to meet a growing demand from elderly fans.

Island Records, part of Universal Records, was one of the first to experiment with cassettes for their new poetry album “Words for You” after receiving requests from senior listeners for a tape version.

Island recruited Tapeline to record and manufacture the tapes and so far over 4,000 copies featuring celebrities reading poetry to classical music have been sold on cassette, while only 768 copies have been downloaded.

The record company is struggling to keep up with demand while owner Alan Williams and his small specialist staff of three have never been busier.

This year Tapeline has produced 500,000 cassettes – 25 per cent up on 2008 – generating a turnover of up to £300,000.

“The last six months has been phenomenal,” said Alan, 46, who started the company in 1985. “We are busier than ever.

The Island deal has been a massive boost for us and we are fully stretched at the moment.

And we can’t take anymore workers on as the work is so specialised no one has the right training nowadays.”

At their peak in 1989, annual tape sales reached 83m in Britain, with Tapeline making up to 2m, but many shops stopped stocking them in 2007 following the dominance of CDs and now downloads.

Tapeline imports parts for the tapes from China and America and uses the same machines it had in the 80s.

Alan added: “Twenty or so years ago when cassettes tapes were at their peak, every record label had their own factory but now there is nobody left, which is great for us as all the work is coming here.

“About nine months ago Island contacted us. They had obviously spotted a gap in the market and acted quickly to fill it.”