{"id":450996,"date":"2021-09-19T12:01:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T10:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/?p=450996"},"modified":"2022-04-12T11:46:07","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T09:46:07","slug":"cassettes-the-undying-need-for-nostalgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/entertain\/cassettes-the-undying-need-for-nostalgia\/","title":{"rendered":"CASSETTES: THE UNDYING NEED FOR NOSTALGIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything old becomes new again. The undying need for nostalgia (even if you haven’t even lived the era) lifts its head once again, as Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Nas start to release their music not only on vinyl, but on cassette as well. What’s the hype about? Is there something special about cassettes, that we just don’t know yet? Let’s roll!<\/strong><\/p>\n

When old becomes new again<\/h2>\n

The staggering uprising of vinyl record sales was astonishing: With sales increasing every year since 2006 to a peak of 27.5 million LPs sold in the United States in 2020, the status of vinyl has become so cemented that it hardly seems fair to describe it merely as a \u201ctrend.\u201d Now the cassette tape is starting to see a renaissance, cruising in vinyl\u2019s enormous wake, says Tucker Bowe of Gear Patrol. Though still peanuts compared to vinyl, it really is a market upswing. UK cassette sales are at their highest levels for more than a decade. By the end of 2019<\/a> 75,000 tapes were sold.<\/p>\n

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Walkman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But what in the world is the deal with recycling the old? Classic cassette players are fairly blocky and require a bit of patience compared to their digital successors. Everyone’s got their portable music player right there in their pocket; why make things hard for yourself?<\/p>\n

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A brief look at History<\/h2>\n

The cassette was developed by the Dutch company Royal Philips in Hasselt, Belgium, by Lou Ottens and his team<\/b>. It was introduced in September 1963. In the ’70s and ’80s when the cassette came to prominence and became the most important recording format of its time, it was a 50\/50 between sound and functionality. Cassettes biggest competitors, reel-to-reel and vinyl, were expensive and bulky, whereas cassettes were portable, snug and quite ubiquitous thanks in large part to the invention of the boom box in 1966 and the iconic Sony Walkman in 1979. The cassette had it’s time as the top seller of its market, but was later crushed by what was essentially an upgrade of itself. This was, of course, the CD (compact disc). They were just as cheap and mobile as the cassettes, and the best part: No need to flip or rewind. By 2000 cassettes had met their doom and the damage was done. Once the soaring leader of portable music and quality sound had diminished to just 5% of the market. Barely anybody was buying, selling, making or listening to tapes.<\/p>\n\n\t\t