In recent years, audio cassettes have made a comeback among music lovers, a phenomenon that has been further exacerbated by the conditions of confinement at home associated with quarantine restrictions.
Gone are the days when you had to arm yourself with a pen to rewind audio cassettes, gone are the players whose batteries had to be changed so regularly? It would seem that all this is already a distant past of the musical world. But those who think so are very mistaken.
The audio cassette is generating new interest among music lovers, albeit to a lesser extent than its counterpart, vinyl, with 100 000 audio cassettes sold in the US in 2022, compared to 10 million vinyl records. This phenomenon is mainly observed in the USA, Japan and England.
More and more artists, especially English-speaking ones, are re-releasing their albums in cassette format – recently Eminem, The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Keith Reichards, The Rolling Stones.
The streaming war, which is creating an increasingly competitive market for artists and labels, is forcing them to diversify their distribution media. The competition among music streaming services has reached the highest limit, and in the struggle for users, each streaming service is trying to implement the most innovative technologies.
As with vinyl, nostalgia is no stranger to this return to retro beauty and grandeur. People are more and more enjoying the return to the physical format.
Today, music equipment companies are re-launching music cassette player production lines. In particular, they offer unique player models with an elegant design, complete with modern features (Bluetooth and rechargeable battery), but still with the good old “recording” tool that allows you to record your own compilations, the ancestors of our current playlists.
As for the sound of cassettes, previously criticized by music lovers, here they especially tried to offer all the modern listening conveniences. In practice, a high sound quality is obtained, which is simply incomparable with the old analogues of thirty years ago.
