Great Debate #3: Are Cassettes Here To Stay?
Cassettes: passing fad or the new vinyl? In the next installment of our summer debate series, MATT SHEA questions whether a medium that effectively died out in the early 1990s is really back for good? Weigh in on the debate in the comments section below for your chance to win a $250 record store voucher of your choosing thanks to Hyundai’s Veloster.
If you look around tapes seem to be everywhere now, popping up in independent record stores across the country and increasing their presence through mail ordering and fanzines. In the digital realm, online stores are being established to cater specifically for the medium, while overseas acts have jumped on the cassette bandwagon – from Deerhunter and Dirty Projectors selling limited-edition keepsakes at gigs to Dinosaur Jr reissuing their first three albums in the format that arguably suits them best.
But is the flurry of interest in all things magnetic really justified, or simply a fad riding on the coattails of vinyl? After all, the hiss of the cassette has never been regarded as stacking up against the warmth of classic wax or the crisp, crystal clear reproduction of compact discs. Are cassettes really an important medium?
Chapter Music’s Guy Blackman thinks so. The label – which built a strong early- to mid-’90s reputation on the back of cassettes – recently dished up their first tape in 15 years: a reissue of Hit The Jackpot’s Holiday EP, which promptly sold out its 150 copies.
“There’s definitely a practical element now,” Blackman says of the cassette’s resurgence, “because people are looking for an alternative to formats that seem to have lost most of their aesthetic appeal. I don’t think people get much joy out of going to a gig and buying a CD. The only physical formats people care about anymore are ones such as vinyl or cassettes that people have some sort of connection to. Because they seem more personal, probably, or more limited, perhaps.”
The practicality for Blackman fits in on the supply side too. “Basically a tape will be $4 each in terms of cost, no matter how many you make,” he explains. “If you want to do 100 7” [vinyl] pressings, it will cost you probably $10 each. If you want to do 100 12”s, it will be $15 each. Tapes make it affordable and you can sell them cheaply.”
Dan Lewis of Melbourne’s Special Award agrees, but sees cassettes as a medium tailored for small labels and independent artists. Last year Special Award put out The Enclosures’ debut mini-album on tape, and they plan a cadre of similar releases for 2012.
“I’m dealing with artists who work in a really prolific way, and I want to have situations where I can keep up with them,” Lewis says. “It’s a tremendously easy format for that … Essentially, I wanted to have a way [to distribute music] that was affordable for labels. And even beyond me, independent artists find it much simpler to do things on that scale with shorter runs.”
Not everyone is convinced, however. Melbourne’s Mistletone Records – an indie touring company and label representing acts such as Beaches and Jonti – released Kes Band’s self-titled album on tape three years ago, but co-owner Sophie Best is ambivalent at best when it comes to the medium. “Cassettes look cute on the merch desk and they are cheap to manufacture, which is always a good thing, but I can't honestly say the demand is there for cassettes. Our cassette sales have been, shall we say, modest and I think they're more a novelty than a meaningful trend.”
Nic Warnock of R.I.P. Society Records (Royal Headache, Woollen Kits) has also experienced the downside of business in the cassette lane, although for him it was more to do with the production side of things than actual sale figures. “They were the biggest failures out of anything I’ve ever done,” Warnock laughs when recounting the recording of shambolic Sydney punksters Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys KISS IT! cassette. “I play in that band as well, and we were trying to avoid digitalisation, so we were dubbing off my four-track into the back of my stereo to make copies in real time. I had to turn my stereo and four-track up really loud to get decent quality. It was very, very time-consuming and didn’t really work.
“The other one was Lloyd Honeybrook’s [Saxual Abstinence] tape, and that was a tonal noise thing,” he continues. “I think the most I sold was in a couple of orders to Japan. I’d gotten hold of a cassette-dubbing machine but it wasn’t loud enough … So basically the experiment releasing cassettes has been quite disastrous for me.”
Still, much like Dan Lewis, Warnock believes cassettes have their place. “I think of it as an important format for particular types of music,” he says. “I don’t think it should be a format that an indie rock band should be pursuing to release their full length album. But as a demo format – as an introductory thing – the cassette is an important medium.”
But what about the retail side of the equation? Do cassette tapes have a place in the modern day record store? Nick Senger, the co-owner of Newcastle’s Vox Cyclops and an obsessive collector of tapes, thinks so. “We’ve had them since we started,” he says. “I’ve personally got over 1000 of the damn things. But I’d say that they’re the most popular format we carry after vinyl, and definitely more popular than CDs. And they’re cheap; you can take a punt. You can buy a whole album for $5 and it actually sounds pretty good.
“I think they are an important format,” he continues. “Firstly, it’s cheap analog and sounds good, and secondly, if you can’t afford to press a record, do a tape. You’re basically talking to the same people anyway and it’s the same idea: it’s two-sided. That’s really important and a lot of people don’t think about that. I think there’s a difference between an album that’s made with two sides and an album that isn’t. Tapes are really good for that.”
Polyester Records in Melbourne have also returned to cassettes, dedicating a small section of both their city and Fitzroy stores to tapes produced by independent artists. Co-owner Nate Nott admits that customers aren’t exactly breaking the doors down to get to the product, but says the numbers are increasing. “It’s something you like to have in the shop,” he says. “I’ve always liked the aesthetic of tapes. I’m part of the cassette generation, really. And they’re pretty cheap still. They’re all $10-15, if that … and probably about 50 to 60 percent of releases are coming with download codes – about the same as vinyl.”
Nott’s candid about his nostalgia for the format, but also thinks tapes fit some bands perfectly. “It’s a great format to put your albums out on. Cassettes still sound great in the car to me. They sound amazing for dirty garage rock bands to put their albums out on cassette.”
"Our cassette sales have been, shall we say, modest and I think they're more a novelty than a meaningful trend.”
Victoria-based Jack Petty recently started an online mail order music store, Popular Favourites, offering a number of cassette releases. He says the medium is a perfect for not only the mail order businesses, but acts centred in the DIY/independent scene. “Cassettes do fit in well with the mail order business. There’s the size, but also the type of music – especially in garage at the moment – there are so many bands who are just starting, only have five or six songs, but people still want to hear them. That’s where tapes really work.”
But where to from here for cassettes? Will they forever fill a small niche in the industry, or is the whole movement destined to disappear in five years, a victim of declining vinyl prices, increasing equipment costs and further digitalisation?
“I think it will last,” says Lewis. “As long as people have the machines; even if it’s a tiny scene. To look at it, they’ve lasted from 1979 or so until now. They’ll never be back as a commercial force. And you never really know what’s around the corner. Ten years ago they were saying that vinyl would never return.”
Warnock’s a touch more cynical, “I think for most people it is a fad,” he says. “I think it’s maybe more of a marketing ploy now than it used to be … I think [they] will last, but I think it will drop out of focus if it doesn’t continue to be a marketing ploy. But then those people that would have done it anyway will continue to do it.”
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oh boy. here we go...
buckle up
here's a preview
No. They are perishable.
CASE CLOSED.
Time to relaunch Fast Forward?
{Obviously the great cassette-magazine (cassettezine?), not the TV show}
I thought this was about VHS tapes.
DELETE THIS WEBSITE.
Great Debate #4: VHS vs Beta
You know, I don't think Thomas Edison has this in mind when he invented the wax cylinder. But anyways.......I digress
They're here to stay in the same way that reel-to-reel is here to stay - collections of irreplaceable recordings by local bands not available in any other format, lovingly stored in a corner collecting dust, pulled out every couple of years which is about as often as you can be bothered hooking up your tape deck to an amp, for a nostalgic meander through your past.
Just maintain your tape decks well, because they're not here to stay. Or if you can find one brand new in twenty years' time, it'll be pricey and from a specialist shop.
I'm getting deja vu with all of these topics...
Didn't we thrash this one out exhaustively months ago?
yep.
Oh yeah, rawr's link.
but not with $250 on the line, everyone's gonna bring their (side) A game!
This new cassette revival is for the birds. I could understand if it was a superior format but it is not. It's kitch like boat shoes, high-waisted jeans, acid wash denim and scarves.
The only awesome thing about cassettes is that they make my iphone look retro-rific!
....retrolicious.....
Cassettes are not here to stay because modern cars, like the Hyundai Veloster, do not have cassette decks. Fuck y'all.
You crazy hipsters where you embrace old objects to rebel against conformity. What next, the Royal Headache Pianola?
Surely this is a rather silly question. Limited number of record companies (notably Bedroom Suck and Negative Guest List here in Brisbane) put out things on cassettes. But it's a super niche market, equivalent to those crazy weirdos who dress up in medieval garb and bash each other in parks around Australia. Fun for about ten minutes until you realise that cassettes got replaced for a very good reason i.e. because they're a crap medium.
The Great Debate #4: What is the utility of all these great debates?
$250
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Excellent, now do the same thing with a wax cylinder recorder and a wire recorder
who won?
great debate 4: why didn't Daemon Foetal Harvest win the hottest 100?
Winner of debate #3: MalikVerlag
Debate #4 coming real soon...
Thanks M+N!
I swear not to buy a single culturally irrelevant, technologically inferior, wilfully obscure private-press product with the money. Whoa — free records!
may we suggest buying 150 cassettes
I like the way you gloss over the fact that I said REALLY CLEARLY: I think some of it is trying to turn back the clock on the digitized and global devaluation of music consumption by shrinking the possible fan base whilst also shrinking the capacity for illegal file sharing, forcing music to remain a physical artifact in some way. I said that when everyone was talking about technical bullshit that didn't explain anything. I think if you're trying to justify it on technical bullshit you're probably either a) hipster or b) a hipster who doesn't like being called a hipster c) some other fairly narrow sub-genre that I can be forgiven for mistaking as a hipster. I'm using Hipster here to mean people who are obscurist for the sake of increasing their cultural value or ironic for the sake of nothing they could explain. If you can come up with a more accurate and specific description of hipster go ahead, I'll take it.
I never said anything bad about cassettes besides my personal preference against them as a musician for a really basic reason that unless you have real money to spend on producing them they have a very low signal to noise ratio. Which in layman's terms means there's lots of hiss obscuring your music. For me that's not real good. Each to his own but opinions are easy, justifying them isn't so much - thus the derogatory comment about hipsters. I also said I could see how some bands would see them as a logical continuance of their sound. The Straight Arrows record with fuck all clarity in the first place and it sounds appealing to me and I can see how it would translate to tape. If someone in here was in a band and said pretty much that I'd wouldn't have a single negative thing to say. It's only the wank about tape having ''feelings'' etc that I think is risible.
Go dig up Roland Barthes' corpse and have a good suck on his cock bone and turn it into an ironic porno soundtracked by Girl Talk. Post modernism argued badly is so tiresome. You can't use it as a self-justifying thesis: ''your quest to use logic and insight to explain things is outdated. Everyone's forgotten the enlightenment. We don't talk about those guys anymore. Baudrillard predicted 9/11 AND childhood obesity. All rationalists ever did was invent penicillin and the origin of species, pffft.''
It's the same as the stupid Hipster argument where you accuse the person who doesn't like something of not being cool enough to understand it. Post modernism explain a few things about modern culture in the West really well. That doesn't mean that one person cannot be more correct in their explanation of a phenomena than another.
I'm about as interested in hearing about people's subjectivity as their dreams.
What the hell are you babbling about? I said there are a myriad of reasons rather than simple one. This misinformed garbage you have responded with is basically irrelevant to my comment. And that last sentence applies to your other responses. If you're going to talk in non sequiturs, forget I mentioned anything in the first place. (I'm not sure you know what 'subjectivity' means either. Or 'Postmodernism', or 'Postrstructuralism', or 'Structuralism'. Though you did mention the problem of 'self-justifying thesis' - and you apparently don't know what 'thesis' means either - maybe you should try looking for these 'self-justifying theses' in your own comments.)
This place seems increasing more like a playground for morons.
:`(
At least you know how smart you are Morris and that's what counts.
Also Morris I was here first. Show some respect please, this has ALWAYS been a playground for morons.
Ladies and gentlemen, Morris Iemma. He'll be taking your first year course in namedropping structuralism in everyday conversation. Put your pens down though because he'll be doing it entirely via the ironic use of slightly humorous, embedded jpegs. Now I'll just take a moment to say a few words about our sponsor and unit co-ordinator Steve Jobs' cyborg.
Namedropping structuralism? As opposed to the guy who blathers about Barthes, Baudrillard, and postmodernism the first chance he gets, incorrectly, even if it is only (falsely) relevant in his little mind? Fantastic. I mentioned the word 'structuralism' because of your comment, you idiot. But no, I get it, don't worry. What sort of fucking cunt mentions something when it is relevant to the dialogue? What a waste of time!
I know how intelligent I am comparatively - i.e. (I'll explain that so you don't have to think about it for more than three minutes), in comparison to you I am intelligent.
First here? Oh, I apologise. A public forum really does need an enforced private code, I know, especially if it stopped all those fuckwits bombarding you with the need to justify your bullshit and the like. Enjoy skipping through your discussion board and doing things like conflating a statement about there being more than one explanation to an argument 'for postmodernism' (whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean) or dismissing a couple of very well known and influential intellectuals as anti-rationalists, or saying the word 'hipster' over and over again until it either becomes a valid argument in your head or until it becomes meaningless.
I hope you yourself don't even find your last comment either 'telling' or 'funny'.
Then again, Morris Iemma is probably just some hipster apologist twat hipster cunt, saying cassettes are rad' and dropping critical theory and European philosophy terms her doesn't understand, huh?
Bye bye.
Great Debate #3 - Part II
Oops I left out 1780 in that post. I'm sure you get that reference to your post right?
I think I'm starting to get why people Troll.
My cat's name is ''Mittens''.
I want The Old Bar to get a cassette player so we can all listen to Liamsnice's old metal tapes.
+1