The great cassette comeback – ‘dead technology’ is gaining a new lease on life
Like vinyl records, the humble and long-forgotten music cassette is making its way back into audiophiles’ collections, and audio equipment companies and major record labels alike have taken notice
Steve Stepp likes to tell people his company is still around after 45 years thanks to his stupidity and stubbornness. As the owner of family-run National Audio Company, the last business to manufacture audio cassette tapes on a massive scale, he weathered nearly two decades of people telling him his product was obsolete. He didn’t budge: Stepp bought up all his competitors’ equipment, continued to produce spoken-word audiobooks, Bibles and blank cassettes and hoped for the best.
Two years ago, something unexpected happened: musical artists and record labels started ramping up their cassette tape requests in a major way. Today National Audio’s business is booming; it’s manufacturing 250 to 350 titles at any given time – a 33 per cent increase from 2014 – and working on five to 10 releases a week alone for major record label conglomerate Universal Music Group.
Piggybacking off the recent surge in demand for 12-inch vinyl records, music fans and artists alike are gravitating back to media formats once considered dead, such as cassettes and 7-inch records (commonly known as 45s). To that end, Chicago-based retailers, including Reckless Records and Dusty Groove, have seen noticeable increases in cassette and 7-inch vinyl sales – a trend long-time Reckless manager Melissa Grubbs believes is due to repopularised vinyl LPs increasing in price.
“New records are very expensive now so you can still get something retro and cool in the form of a cassette for, say, US$1.99 (HK $15.50),” she says.
Reckless largely stocks cassettes from smaller independent labels, while Dusty Groove owner Rick Wojcik says most of the cassettes sold at his store are vintage, with an emphasis on soul and hip hop.