Just as the Vinyl Record has pretty much died off in the mid 90's, the end of the cassette tape is coming close. So far cassette tapes have been in use since their perfection by Philips in the 1960's and reached their peak in 1989 in the UK, selling 83 million tapes in the UK alone. Now this has fallen to just 0.9 million tapes sold last year. When the cassette tape was created, Philips decided not to charge royalties for it in order to ensure it quickly became accepted. Before the tape, reel-to-reel recorders and vinyl recording booths dominated the market.
Back in the mid 80's, tapes accounted for 54% of global music sales. However one thing that has not changed was the worry that home taping was killing the music industry, just like today's version of downloading. Just as we have CD recorders and MP3 players, back then most taped from Vinyl and carried portable cassette players and some created mixed compilations to tape. The Sony Walkman was market leader back then, just like how the iPod is now.
So far, the audio books are still driving cassette tape sales to some extent, with a third of these sold on tape in the UK. In some countries such as Turkey and India, cassette tapes are still selling very well with around 50% of audio sales still on tape. Due to decreasing cassette tape sales in the US, the US's largest magnetic tape factory had ceased its production earlier this year.
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But industry experts believe it does not have long left, at least in the West. The cassette may have hissed, been prone to wow and flutter, and often ended its life chewed in a tape deck, but it ruled for four decades before MP3s and downloads. However, the cassette's reign now seems to be over. "Cassette albums have declined quite significantly since their peak in 1989 when they were selling 83 million units in the UK," Matt Phillips of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) told BBC World Service's The Music Biz programme. "Last year we saw that there were about 900,000 units sold. It's clear to see that cassette sales are dwindling fast." |
While it has been a long time since I handled a cassette tape, I do remember the days of making my own compilations. While the digital age may appear to make it simple to make home compilations, the one thing that is causing a serious problem is the music industry trying to put DRM and copy protection restrictions on music. As a result, we get compatibility issues, music only working on certain 'compliant' devices, different audio / DRM formats, legal issues against breaking copy-protection measures and so on. This mess and confusion simply did not exist back in the peak days of the cassette tape.
At the moment, we see that the music industry has gotten so concerned about piracy over P2P networks that they are constantly suing those who share copyrighted music. However, the only things that have changed since before the P2P age is how consumers got their music without paying for it. For example, vinyl to tape copying was the equivalent to today's CD to MP3 copying. People gave copied cassettes to friends just as consumers do it with CDs today. Finally, some may say 'But, there was no file sharing back then". Well, consumers simply taped their favourite music from the radio instead.
Finally, the one thing that will likely keep tapes going for another while is dictation. If one wishes to correct a mistake they made while recording onto cassette, they simply rewind to before the mistake was made and continue taping. With digital voice recorders and especially those built into MP3 players, most only give the option to delete the whole recording and start over.
Source: BBC News - Technology
