Cassettes? Why?

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Tim Hall

The way hipsters are trying to resurrect cassettes as a format speaks volumes about the herd mentality of hipsters, and their obsession with style over content. The cassette tape is a completely obsolete format for a reason. Vinyl has its merits for high-end audiophiles, but the cassette is simply inferior to the technologies that superseded it in every possible way.

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5 Responses to Cassettes? Why?

  1. John P says:
    May 21, 2013 at 12:37 pm

    Is this because of the BBC article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22533522) about the subject? What I noticed was the sidebar which said that 70% of the cassette sales resulted in a download to go with it. As they speculate, maybe this is because people want the cassette not as a source of music but as something physical to have instead of just a load of bytes. A display of media is perhaps more subtly satisfying than just waving an iDrone around. It’s a bit like ebooks, they are easy and convenient but you can’t swat files with them … :-)

  2. Serdar says:
    May 21, 2013 at 2:48 pm

    And even vinyl’s merits are largely due to misperceived inferiorities about digital recording. I got the lowdown on this from a guy who was an audio engineer during the early days of digital, who put it this way: the early D/A technology, outside of the studio, was indeed terrible, so it was no surprise that many people decided vinyl was inherently superior (never mind the surface noise or the warping or the destructive playback…). I used to have a long, deeply-researched post about this, but it apparently vanished.

  3. Mike Foley says:
    May 21, 2013 at 9:51 pm

    I am an audio geek, and can see no reason to buy cassettes. Vinyl, played back properly, is still a valid way to enjoy music, whereas the prerecorded tape was always a nasty thing, both in terms of sound and packaging. Having said that, making a mix tape was much more fun than compiling a playlist, and if the equipment was good enough the results were perfectly listenable. Far better than prerecorded tapes, and iTunes purchases. I agree it’s cool to own nice things, rather than a download, but please buy the CD or LP! Unless of course those 2 formats are not hip enough…. ;-)

    I’m off out to find a Cylinder Player, then I’ll be ahead of the pack for the next hip thing!

  4. Tim Hall says:
    May 21, 2013 at 9:58 pm

    Number of people I know who buy expensive vinyl LPs from indeoendent bands and don’t actually have a record player to play them on.

    Back in the 80s hardly anyone I knew bought pre-recorded tapes. We’d all buy vinyl and then tape it.

  5. Mike Foley says:
    May 22, 2013 at 5:13 am

    I buy vinyl LPs, and then play them on my record player. The quality of pressings these days is much higher than back in the 1980s, and is my format of choice for sound quality. Some bands have stated publicly that the vinyl editions are the definitive versions of their albums. The Flower Kings, Neil Young, and Jack white