Sounds like audio cassettes are back

The once ubiquitous audio cassette is back and how! A recent news item in the media – about a fortnight ago – made fascinating reading when it stated that commercial tape duplication by the largest cassette manufacturer in the U.S. had increased by 20% last year. It was company’s best performance in 48 years.

Although the music industry went digital decades ago, which explains the steady decline of the brick-and-mortar retail outlets – the closure of Mumbai’s Rhythm House, last year, was genuinely heart-wrenching for me.

However, the sales of audio cassettes [also known as music cassettes, cassette tapes, and mix tapes; first introduced in 1962], increased apparently by 140% during last year’s Christmas festive season in comparison to the same period in 2015.

At least part of the revival must be credited to the 2014 soundtrack of the Marvel Comic movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy when, in February that year, director James Gunn revealed that the film would incorporate songs from the ’60s and ’70s, such as a song that I grew up with during my school days, Hooked On A Feeling.

If you have viewed the movie, the Blue Swede rendition of the song is featured on a mix tape played by hero Peter Quill, which acts as a manner for him to stay connected to earth, his home, and with his family.

Three albums from Guardians Of The Galaxy were released by Hollywood Records – an American record label of the Disney Music Group, responsible for releasing Marvel Studios soundtracks – on July 29, 2014.

The film’s instrumental musical score; Guardians Of The Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1, which comprised of twelve songs; and a deluxe edition featuring both albums. By August 2014, the album, which mirrored Quill’s mix tape, reached the top of the U.S. album chart, becoming the first soundtrack album in their history consisting entirely of previously released songs, to top the chart.  

More pertinently, Hollywood Records released a cassette version of the Awesome Mix Vol. 1 soundtrack on November 28, 2014, and, in turn, it became the first cassette released by Disney since 2003.

This cassette was appropriately launched on ‘Cassette Store Day’ which is, said its organisers during the inaugural year in 2013, “no longer the inadequate, younger sibling of vinyl and CD”. Further defined “as a celebration of a physical product that is accessible, fun, cheap and still going strong in the turbulent current musical climate”, the project’s leaders were a trio of labels that are in the habit of releasing new music on cassette: Sexbeat, Kissability, and Suplex cassettes, who handled the U.K. and E.U. side of celebrations, whereas California-based Burger Records handled similar initiatives in the U.S. By 2016, surviving music retail outlets in the U.S. and U.K. were joined by participants from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, and Japan.

The Cassette Store Day is a direct offshoot of April’s International Record Store Day, which was established in 2008, and the event’s official ambassadors have included musicians Iggy Pop, Jack White, and Ozzy Osbourne.

My cassette collection is now restricted to a few products that I launched in 1989-90 as part of music label Magna sound and, of course, a collector’s item in erstwhile Mumbai-based Rock Machine’s demo, provided to me by the band members for my opinion on the tracks featured, well in advance of the launch of their 1988 debut, Rock ‘n’ Roll Renegade. For the trivia-minded, the demo contains an instrumental song – by keyboardist Zubin Balaporia – that never made to the final product.

Artistes now prefer to cut their albums on tape as it not only costs less than vinyl, a physical format that has also shown a massive resurgence, but recording on tapes can be initiated at home too.

New fans of this one-time, single-most popular format [before CDs arrived] include Eminem and Twenty One Pilots, the latter being a U.S. based band being only the third artiste, following the Beatles and Elvis Presley, to have two singles featured simultaneously in the ‘Top 5’ of the U.S. chart [this occurred last year]. Also on the list of audio cassette “converts” is Justin Bieber, who is scheduled to perform live in Mumbai in May as part of his global ‘Purpose’ tour.

In that, these musicians – as part of a growing tribe of “converts” – have ensured that the audio cassette that was once considered obsolete is not only still alive, but will at least survive until the rest of our lives.

The writer has been part of the media and entertainment business for over 23 years. He still continues to pursue his hobby, and earns an income out of it.