Reasons to buy cassette tapes

Last weekend a friend couple ended up the night coming home for some tea, chess and chat. I changed the record in the player to the beautiful white marble Fire + Ice's "Birdking" vinyl, and that led to a conversation around music, where I, perhaps annoyingly, ended up bragging about my music colection showing this or that vinyl or CD, mostly talking about artwork, limited editions and what attracted me about this or that album. Nothing too extensive or boring (I hope, for their sake).

At one point I showed the latest C-Utter release (actually because of its artwork and packaging, uncommon for a tape), and got as a reply "now that's something I don't understand". It was simple: my friend understands everything about why I prefer physical to digital (music-wise), and what's the attraction about vinyl records or (more commonly understood) CDs. But cassette tapes? Why? They went to their homes before I had the chance to reply, but the question stood on my head. So here's one possible reply:

Most people that buy cassette tapes do it by fetishism. I can understand that, and it's more or less similar (or even a sub-case) to the "physical release fetishism), and, like every other fetishes, it actually has an emotional part, not mandated by reason. But that's actually not my case, not in the particular case of cassette tapes. I want physical releases, and a cassette tape is a physical release - and that's as far as I can go fetishism-wise.

So what are the reasons why I buy cassette tapes?

Well, one of them is that... cassette tapes are cheap. Really cheap. No, I mean it. As an example, I can tell you about my second to last cassette tape purchase: a Thanatos album. I bought it directly to the record label that released it - at the time in two formats, tape and CD. The CD version costs $13.98, the tape version (the last copy, I suspect) cost $0.99 (or something like that, I don't want to lie, but if it wasn't that it was only a couple of cents less). See the difference? Exactly the same album, different formats. Well, I listen to tapes anyway, I have tapes anyway, it's not like I have a burden, or that I'm buying a lesser version. For me, it's more or less the same, only super-cheaper. Is this a reason or what?

But there are other reasons. That C-Utter cassette, "Urban Hermits", was only released on tape. The same thing about Astra Autisma's latest, self-titled, release. And this is more common than you would believe. So, what to do? Refrain from having that album or buying it on tape? No question here, this is a great reason to buy compact cassettes.

Finaly, the most arguable one, but one that I'm paying more and more attention (maybe because I am also a recording artist). Preservation. Yes, you heard it right. People talk to me about the cassettes saying "but they break the tape, heat messes with them, they're unreliable, it takes a lot of time of putting it back together when something happens with its tape"... but they're not looking to two crucial (for me) aspects: not only tapes "degrade gracefuly" (the sound gets poorer, but it doesn't just stop working, unlike CDs or digital files), but they actually have more longevity. What does that matter? Well, my music colection is actually already crumbling to dust. Several CDs unplayable, one cassette tape dead (recorded in 1976, 33 years ago), and counting. What percentage of it will I be able to play out in a decade? Will my grandsons be able to listen to the music I created? To me, preservation matters. Oh, sure, you can shoot me a "if you want preservation, go vinyl!". And I agree. But tapes are way cheaper to manufacture, so there's lots of music on tape you can't find on vinyl.

I understand if you still think buying tapes is silly. Really. Also, I don't mind :-) But, there, here are my reasons (or at least the ones I can remember of at this time of the day, my cup of tea is already empty, which must mean this blog post is bigger than it should) to buy compact cassettes.

Music Media - are physical formats dying?

I guess that there are plenty of ways I could use to talk about this, and a lot of things I could say about it. So, since this comes as a reflection of two things that happened during my vacations, I'll just tell you about those two, talk only a little about my reflections about it... and let you do your own thinking.

The first one is about Stereo 8. What's in the picture is - for those that don't know - a Stereo 8 cartridge. Before the massification of the Cassette Tape, this was what people used to listen as a more portable (yet inferior) media for recorded music. After the event of massification of the use of cassettes, Stereo 8 lost most of their fans, with exceptions of truck drivers (most of their vehicles came with an 8-track player) and in some less developed countries. This one is mine, one of the two only 8-track I have that still play. The curious fact about it is that, for me, this is the best Tango album I ever listened to. In fact, I generally don't like Tango, but I really dig this album, and during vacations spent quite a few hours listening to it while playing Scrabble with Paula. Unlike the other 8-track cartridge I own, this one was never released in any other format. That means that if I want to listen to it, I must do it from the original source (well, maybe next time I go to Lamego I'll try to rip it to another format). This music is virtually lost: not only I don't believe there are that many 8-track listeners out there, but the probability they have this one, and still playable, is pretty much none. The format is so dead, that each time I tell somebody that the last 8-track released I know of was in 2004 (even if I suspect that if I dig enough I'll find that some crazy band released one more recently), their reaction is generally disbelief: they expected it was in the eighties. So, what happens if you want this music? Nothing. You simply can't have it. Of course it would done absolutely no harm if I made a copy and give it to you, but that would be illegal, this isn't in Public Domain. And since it only enters in Public Domain 70 years after its authors die, we both will be dead or deaf by then... you'll just have to believe this is good music. I don't really think that 70 years after-death for getting music into Public Domain makes any sense, but unfortunately EU is thinking in extending it even more...

The other one is about one music store in Lamego: Brincodisco. I had a quite long and interesting chat with its owner (that was already owner of that place even before I was born, my brother and older sister used to buy there their records...), and there were lots of things in that chat and my visit to the store that made me think in several things - so I'll probably end up talking about that store several times in the future. But, for now, the thing that made me enter into the store the most (well, besides being a music store and me being on vacations): there were several cassette tapes exposed there. But the shock was when I entered: my estimation is that the store sells (more or less) 40% CDs, 35% Vinyl records and 25% cassette tapes. That's right: one quarter of the items selling there are cassette tapes. How do you take this piece of information, when the trend nowadays is saying that all the physical formats are dead but CD, that is dying?

Reality check, please: physical formats are never going to die, and CDs and Vinyls have decades in front of them, before they disappear. You might not like this, you might want to ignore this when you make your business, prediction or whatever you do, but if confronted with this, you need to realize that, even if a niche, the physical music market is here to stay. And I'm glad.

Record Tapes

This text was written friday night, offline.

I heard three times already this year that "record tapes aren't commercialized anymore". The third time was today, after having a morning conversation with Nuno Nunes, where, among other things, I was telling him I had just ordered one CD and one Tape.

What comes to surprise to most people is not only that record tapes are still commercialized, but, mostly, that record tapes are being released nowadays, and people really buy them. My case? It's the seventh record tape I got this year, from which three of them were released in 2006 and two in 2007. Why get record tapes instead of CD's? Well, as scary as it might sound to you, I actually know people that prefer record tapes to CD's. But in my case, I (almost) always try to get the CD release, but sometimes it is sold out and other times there's no CD release of that album. Like I usually avoid to buy digital music (even if there's no physical release of that album), I also usually avoid buying a cassette even if there's no CD release. But there are some records you need to have, right?

Finally, I recall Nuno Nunes telling me, when he moved to his new home, that he still had no other way to listen to music at home but listening to his vinyl records (which was being surprisingly good since he was listening to some great stuff he wasn't listening as often as he wanted to). I also recall him buying Dead Combo's latest record (released in vinyl only). So we're really in the same position here: besides using the computer the only way I have at the moment to listen to music (something I want to fix this weekend, BTW) is listening to tapes. Also, I buy tapes when I don't have how to buy the same album as a CD.

In conclusion: record tapes are not dead. There's still a market for them, believe it or not. They are still manufactured (there's one company in Portugal doing it), pressed and sold. Also, there's still those who like the format, being their preferred format or not. Yes, I believe that record tapes are going to die in the future (I cannot say the same about CD's and specially vinyl), but that future is still more than a couple of years distant.

... Now on monday, Nuts pointed me out for an article called "Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin" [1].

[1] - http://tinyurl.com/2b6fzl

Rarity Shelf

I couldn't be less than happy: and this pictures show you the reason.

Let me just give you a small introduction to why:

• As I told here, I'm the guy I know of with the biggest Marilyn Manson collection I know. My Mechanical Animals CD, the n'th I've owned, is scratched, and I was sad.
  
• The best Mechanical Animals edition I've allways seen was the one you're seeing in the pictures. I've ordered it 6 years ago, with a simple call: "if you get it, new, for less than 50€, I want it". I never got it.
  
• Today, I got a package with it inside. This pictures are from MY copy of the vynil.
  
• I didn't pay for it, it was offered. A BIG THANK YOU TO YOU-KNOW-WHO-YOU-ARE ;-)
  
• This edition is considered 5/5 in rarity.
• The only copy I know of it, new, on sale, costs $85,00. Plus Shipping costs.