Cassette tapes and walkmans back on top? This is another return on the wave of nostalgia

In the United States alone, sales of cassette tapes increased by 173 to 343 thousand copies. This year, over 306,000 tapes were sold by the end of October alone.

Of course, compared to CD albums or streaming, these numbers look ridiculous. In fact, it is difficult to compare them even with vinyl (these have been experiencing a renaissance for several years), whose sales in the same period exceeded 19.4 million copies.

Billie Eilish album cassette Youtube/Unbox Kings International

But there is something to it, because mainstream artists began to take an interest in cassettes. Recently, albums on cassettes have been released, e.g. Billie Eilish (“Happier than Ever”), justin Bieber (“Justice”), Harry Stiles (“Harry’s House”), Tyler Swift (“Evermore”). Reissues of iconic albums by such bands as Metallica, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Placebo and Nirvana are also still being released on cassettes.

Cassettes are also loud because of movies and series. A Walkman and a cassette tape with an album by British singer Kate Bush play an important role in the fourth season of the series “Stranger Things”. A few days after the premiere of the series Bush single “Running Up That Hill” released over 35 years ago hit the top of the charts, and the popularity of the phrase “cassette tape” broke popularity records in the Google search engine.

The latter is hardly surprising. Some viewers of “Stranger Things” know cassette tapes and walkmans only from stories or have never heard of them before, as you can see by watching the video below:

A brief history of the cassette tape

The “career” of the cassette tape was quite short (if we compare it with other media), but at the same time very turbulent. This standard was developed by the company Phillipswhich presented it to the world in 1963 at the German Radio Exhibition. Interestingly, the cassettes were not created with the music industry in mind. They were supposed to be used rather for amateur recording of music and voice.

Audio cassettes Sony Herdiana / Shutterstock

Relatively low price of this medium, as well as the tape recorders themselves, made cassettes a hit in the world of music – despite the compromises related to sound quality. Because – let’s face it – against the background of digital recordings on CDs or even vinyl – the cassettes sounded and still sound quite average, not to say bad.

And they sound that way because of technological limitations. While CDs are capable of reproducing the entire audible frequency range from 20 Hz (half an octave below the lowest piano note) to 20 kHz (a frequency too high for most people to hear), analog cassettes have problems in both high (above 10 Khz) and low (below 40 Hz) frequencies.

There are also issues with durability. Cassette tape, like any other analog carrier, simply wears out over time, and the quality of the recorded audio material degrades.

Sony Walkman photo Henry Flickr.com/CC

All this, however, did not prevent cassettes from conquering the music market, although this carrier had to wait for its golden period until 1979. It was then that Sony launched a portable cassette player on the market. walkmanbecause we are talking about him, he completely changed the way we deal with music.

The idea for the Walkman was born out of necessity. Sony co-founder Mr Masaru Ibuka, he made numerous business trips, during which he listened to his beloved opera arias. Ibuka wasn’t happy about having to lug around a bulky and large cassette player. So he asked his colleagues to design a lighter and compact device.

Original Sony Walkman TPS-LT photo: Grant Hutchinson/Flickr.com/CC

The Walkman prototype was created in 1978. The key element was the original mechanism switching operating modes, which was made of flat aluminum elements. Thanks to this, the device was durable and resistant to damage, and at the same time had small dimensions and weight.

On July 1, 1979, the “Sony Walkman TPS-L2” hit the Japanese market and immediately became a market hit. A year later, the device went to the USA and Europe. And that’s when Cassette tape sales skyrocketed. Suffice it to say that in 1983 they became the most popular audio medium, surpassing vinyl for the first time in history.

The Walkman has also become a sociological phenomenon. In 1984, Japanese professor Shuhei Hosokawa coined the term “The Walkman Effect”. In an article published in Popular Music, the scientist suggested that the Sony device cuts off listeners from the outside world, creating a safe comfort zone for them. Two years later, the term “Walkman” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, this golden age ended almost as quickly as it began. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, digital players began to enjoy increasing popularity. CDs pushed cassettes out of the market, just as cassettes pushed vinyl out of the market. Sony followed this trend, and the Discman took the place of the cassette Walkman.

The current increase in interest in cassette tapes seems to be more of a curiosity than a trend that may have any impact on the music industry. Cassettes will remain primarily the domain of collectors and a small group of fans of retro technology. A similar fate will soon await the “killer of cassettes”, i.e. the CD.

Compact discs are “dying” before our eyes, and recently the growing popularity of streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal has contributed to this. Perhaps in the future there will be a kind of renaissance of this format, as was the case with vinyl. Currently, however, the Compact Disc is entering a period of decline.