When Taylor Swift’s releases her new album, “Life of a Showgirl,” in October, it can be heard on the usual places, including streaming, vinyl and…cassette tape?
The cassette tape was once one of the most common ways to listen to music, overtaking vinyl in the 1980s before being surpassed by CDs. But the physical audio format has become an artifact of a bygone era, giving way to the convenience of streaming.
Or, that’s what many thought.
In 2023, 436,400 cassettes were sold in the United States, according to the most recent data available from Luminate, an entertainment data firm. Although that’s a far cry from the 440 million cassettes sold in the 1980s, it’s a sharp increase from the 80,720 cassettes sold in 2015 and a notable revival for a format that had been all but written off.
Cassettes might not be experiencing the resurgence of vinyls or even CDs, but they are making a bit of a comeback, spurred by fans wanting an intimate experience with music and nostalgia, said Charlie Kaplan, owner of online store Tapehead City.
“People just like having something you can hold and keep, especially now when everything’s just a rented file on your phone,” Kaplan told CNN.
“Tapes provide a different type of listening experience — not perfect, but that’s part of it. Flip it over, look at the art and listen all the way through. You connect with the music with more of your senses,” he said.
No. Cassettes sound like shit. They are a very lossy format. Vinyl actually sounds different in ways that people like. My vinyl collection has nothing to do with nostalgia (I grew up after CDs were on the rise). On a solid system, there’s a lot more fidelity in the bass on vinyl.
Cassettes don’t sound too bad if you actually have good equipment, which most people nowadays don’t (because most can’t afford collector’s prices for decent decks). I was born in 97, vinyl records were long dead by then. Most people who get into vinyl nowadays actually grew up with iPods (hence the term “fake nostalgia”).
Eh… it’s pretty much all down to mastering, but vinyl records have a limited dynamic range compared to CDs which makes the bass more pronounced maybe? Not something I’ve noticed but I tend to prefer clear high end and mid range anyway.
Also, old records (from early in the CD era) had nowhere near the fidelity of modern records. I played a modern record for my father once and he was astounded how far they’ve come.
In my experience, it’s still pretty hit or miss. The smaller indie labels tend to get it right more than the big names.
Digital fidelity (sample rate) grows more granular in higher frequencies because that’s easier for us to distinguish. (See the Fletcher-Munson Curve from Bell Labs: on a bell curve, we hear best at the frequency of a baby crying.) Think of stair steps that get closer and more numerous over time. That’s a representation of the resolution of the sound across frequencies from low to high. I may be explaining it poorly because I moved away from audio engineering toward a different career a long time ago.
Analog has all the information that’s missing in between the larger, wider steps. It’s not a placebo (didn’t say you called it that). It’s how digital audio works.
My instance isn’t allowing me to upload images for some reason. It had extended downtime the other day, so maybe that’s related. Anyway, here’s a link to a page with a chart that illustrates what I’m attempting to describe.
Thanks, it’s always great to hear the details from some guy who knows his shit