Cassette Tape is back

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. But today the cassette tape has been swept aside by MP3 players, playlists and music libraries. Currys is to stop selling cassettes and, crucially, hi-fi systems which play tapes will also no longer be stocked.

The craze for cassettes as music messengers may well be gone, and hundreds of millions of tapes are out there unused. With 80’s nostalgia rife in the visual world and recycling and sustainability mentioned just about everywhere, the humble cassette has undergone several unlikely re-incarnations in the last few years. Wether it be the retro graphics adorning them or the reels of tape inside them cassettes are finding their way back into the hands of the ‘cool’ crowd.

Examples of cassette lovers: Creativebarn, Contexture Design, Redimei, Cassette is not dead, Worldwidefred, Private Circle, iri5, Lagrange Apex and Recorderrace