Weekly survey: Are you into the so-called “cassette resurrection?”
A quick search online for “cassettes” will uncover some results about how the format is making a comeback. Hell, the annual Cassette Store Day event is coming up next month.
My position on cassettes is well-known–I hate the bloody things and wish we’d move on–but this survey question is about you. As far as the cassette resurrection goes, are you really in, sort of in, or out entirely?
Are you into the so-called cassette resurrection? Are you part of the format's comeback? (Please retweet)
— Alan Cross (@alancross) August 30, 2021
No, still trying to replace everything I still have on cassette….. Haven’t listened to a cassette in years now.
I have a lot of nostalgia towards my cassette collection. If I was sit down with the boxes and boxes of my old cassettes, I could probably tell you the story of how I came to buy each one. I love the liners notes, etc. But I haven’t listened to a cassette in years. Too inconvenient. Would only buy another cassette out of some sort of nostalgia kick, and would probably never listen to it. Would much rather put on a CD, or turn Spotify on.
Nope. There’s not too much I miss about cassette’s apart from their portability. And I never have a pencil lying around anymore so I’d be screwed.
I posted on another thread about this but the gist is that the whole anti-cassette thing (and yes, I’m not a true audiophile and, yes, I’ve got one ear that’s completely hosed so there’s a lot that’s lost on me these days) is that the guy who digitized my music for me was pretty surprised when my mostly 80s cassettes sounded really very good. This is his living and so I have to assume that as he listens to what must be a vast array of stuff from (my bizarre collection – he admitted that he wasn’t a big fan of a lot of it but some of it was on some of his old wavelengths) the briliant to what must constitute’noise’ to him musically, he’s also bound to hear all kinds of quality as well.
Some of the cassetes just didn’t survive the years. They were all stored in the same exact units and in the same environments and transported in the same manner over the decades. One or two might have been taken out here and there but those one or two weren’t the ones that were good (as in better) or bad – there was no difference. I thought he’d pointed out a series that was consistently bad but I’m not seeing a pattern that is consistent and the ones that survived vs not surviving weren’t necessarily played a lot vs not although it skewed towards played more often but that was the nature of that time. I had plenty of it so all my music of that time got played a lot. It was also before my collection became unwieldy.
But, beyond me, there are lots of bands still out there, new and not-so, flogging all manner of media – cassettes, usb sticks, vinyl, cd (with cds becoming a little more rare and vinyl becoming the norm although that was to use Alan’s phrase in the ‘before times’. Two shows in and I’m stone broke and not buying merch although I threw some money at two bands at my first show…I didn’t mean to. It just happened..must’a’ tripped.
FYI: The euro as of three-four weeks ago was in the dollar’s favor so anyone who uses discogs (It’s a means to an end – I am certainly NOT promoting them. Much like everyone else, they are a shell of their former selves.) or the like and in a shopping mood should strike while the getting is good if you’re looking for stuff in that area.