bobzilla77 wrote:
It's ultra niche hipster indie collector mentality at its purest. Nothing wrong with that. But it is not to do with music, sound quality, ease of reaching the audience, cost reduction or anything practical.
I knew it.
bobzilla77 wrote:
It's ultra niche hipster indie collector mentality at its purest. Nothing wrong with that. But it is not to do with music, sound quality, ease of reaching the audience, cost reduction or anything practical.
kath wrote:i do not wanna buy the world a fucquin gotdamn coke.
Charlie O. wrote:I think Coan and Googa are right.
GoogaMooga wrote:How about upstart bands who can't afford to press vinyl or CD? Cassettes are a viable option if they want to share their music.
harvey k-tel wrote:GoogaMooga wrote:How about upstart bands who can't afford to press vinyl or CD? Cassettes are a viable option if they want to share their music.
They've got this thing called the "internet" these days.
GoogaMooga wrote:harvey k-tel wrote:GoogaMooga wrote:How about upstart bands who can't afford to press vinyl or CD? Cassettes are a viable option if they want to share their music.
They've got this thing called the "internet" these days.
Sell physical
Charlie O. wrote:I think Coan and Googa are right.
bobzilla77 wrote:GoogaMooga wrote:How about upstart bands who can't afford to press vinyl or CD? Cassettes are a viable option if they want to share their music.
Not anymore. That was a valid reason to do cassette releases in the 1980s and 90s. Today almost no one in your target audience is likely to have a working cassette player. And cassette duplication is more expensive than CD printing, either homemade or at the pressing plant.
It's ultra niche hipster indie collector mentality at its purest. Nothing wrong with that. But it is not to do with music, sound quality, ease of reaching the audience, cost reduction or anything practical.
Ghost of Harry Smith wrote:
It seems more prevalent with some genres and aesthetics like noise, minimal synth, hauntology, all that aren’t undermined by a bit of tape hiss. In fact it might add something to the experience.
My friend has released tapes with his improv guitar-noise duo. He says he does this because listeners want something tangible when they’re impulse-buying at the merch stall, along with a download code for MP3 or Flac tucked inside. They’ll use the latter and just keep the former as a memento. He says getting tapes made is much, much cheaper than vinyl and on par with CD, however the CD as artifact is simply not valued by most of his age group (20-somethings). They don’t own CD players so a CD has no more or less utility to them than a tape, while the latter seems to have more of an aura of rarity /collectibility. My theory is these kids grew up seeing so many DVDs, CD-Rs and CDs getting scratched, useless and then binned, that they unconsciously resent their disposability as a waste of resources, time, etc. So they like tapes because a scratched bootleg copy of Monsters Inc or The Incredibles wouldn’t play when they were 7 or 8!
Toby wrote:I think the issue is that formats like tape can sound great with quality equipment. Yet back in the eighties most people didn't have access to that sort of thing and when CDs came along, the jump in quality with the new format, combined with ease of use, was almost quantum.
A friend of mine started putting out tapes on his label back in 2008 as he was able to get hold of Nakamichi decks for virtually nothing.
There is something in resurrecting old formats that had been consigned to the dustbin because of "progress". We all know for example that Betamax was superior to VHS, but "lost the war".
Robert wrote:Just read an article in the paper over the weekend that cassette sales five folded in recent years
Ghost of Harry Smith wrote: My theory is these kids grew up seeing so many DVDs, CD-Rs and CDs getting scratched, useless and then binned, that they unconsciously resent their disposability as a waste of resources, time, etc. So they like tapes because a scratched bootleg copy of Monsters Inc or The Incredibles wouldn’t play when they were 7 or 8!
kath wrote:i do not wanna buy the world a fucquin gotdamn coke.
Charlie O. wrote:I think Coan and Googa are right.
never/ever wrote:Interestingly enough, I had to repair a cassette that got stuck in a player today. Operation succeeded, except for a small piece of crumpled tape which probably will have a lot of wow and flutter on it now.
As with everything in life, a lot of things will last a lifetime if you treat it with care.