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Cassette Tape Comeback?

In the words of the International Cassette Store Day organizers, “Turns out it wasn’t a sh** idea after all…”

That idea happened to be International Cassette Store Day, a global celebration of cassette tape culture that returns on Saturday, Oct. 8. Founded by UK indie labels Suplex Cassettes, Kissability, and Sexbeat in 2013, Cassette Store Day was inspired by the annual Record Store Day that began in 2007.

Matt Flag, of Suplex Records, had this to say about the format that was introduced by Philips in 1962 and experienced its heyday in the late 1980s before the compact disc came along:

“Tapes have been the most constant musical format in my life. As a kid it enabled me to cheaply buy new releases but more importantly, it allowed my friendship group to grow our music tastes by swapping blank tapes filled with gems and even our own home-recorded forays into music. Today it is the most affordable showcase for a band that is not ready to spend £1,000 to drop 500 7s into the world, so I can run a label that takes chances and puts out as many releases as I want to due to the cheapness and convenience of the format. Plus they look rad!” [from an NME blog post by Kissability founder Jen Long].

But unlike Record Store Day and its push to “celebrate the culture of the independently owned record store,” Cassette Store Day seeks to celebrate actual cassettes above commercial gains for shops.

That’s not to say Cassette Store Day only encourages people to hunker down with their personal longtime collections. In fact, more than 150 musical groups are set to release cassette versions of some of their albums this weekend, including Death Cab for Cutie (2001’s The Photo Album), the Ramones (with their 1976 self-titled debut album), Big Star (releasing Record, Radio City and 3rd on tape), and appropriately enough, various artists on American Laundromat Records’ release of High School Reunion: A Tribute To Those Great 80s Films.

Reaction to Cassette Store Day has been understandably mixed and the founders of Cassette Store Day are well aware. But as Kissability’s Jen Long wrote in a blog post on NME the first year of Cassette Store Day, “I can imagine that outside my indie circle this announcement is being greeted with rolls of eyes and a sigh of, ‘[expletive] hipsters.’ But it’s not all nostalgic cool. Tapes make sense in not only our current economic climate, but in our musical one too.”

Despite the ability to release albums on the fly in digital format, Long insists that “you can’t sell mp3s from the merch table.” And as co-founder Steve Rose, of Sexbeat Records, insists, cassettes will make a comeback for their inexpensive and easy manufacturing, and the fact that you don’t have to commit to making large quantities.

Maybe they will and the doubters will be taken aback. At least that’s the hope of Burger Records, which leads Record Store Day releases and events in the U.S.:

“When we’re done spreading the good word of our fave format no one will ever ask ‘why cassettes?’ again!”

For more on Cassette Store Day and to see North American releases, head over to CassetteStoreDay.us.

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