Last week, when I was writing my review of BlutEngel’s new album, something else got my attention too. They not only released their work on CD, vinyl, and digital, but also in cassette (limited edition). This got me thinking about the cassette revival.
We, the oldies, the ones that were born in the 80s and before that, know pretty well the cassette format. An object that may seem weird to the newer generations, for us was our everyday device to listen to our favorite artists. I used to like it because it had the possibility of recording over it (if you don’t like its content) and doing mix tapes with the songs you liked). The only thing I didn’t like about it was that you couldn’t choose an exact song, because it was tape, so you had to guess kind of approximately where the song you wanted to listen was located.
Nostalgia, it’s a powerful thing. We’ve seen it in clothes and fashion (they bring back old trends once in a while) and we’ve seen that in music too with the comeback of the vinyl format.
Many people like to collect vinyl. The analogic sound, the beautiful big album covers, and all the magic it conveys, especially to the ones that got to experience them growing up or watching their parents playing them. Remembering those happy memories is something special.
Now something similar has happened with the cassettes. My childhood and teenage years were filled with them (original and mixed tapes, made by me or others) and I loved them, and I still have most of them.
Then, when the Compact Disc appeared, the thing that I loved the most about it was how easy it was to look for a song without guessing its position on the tape and listen to it a million times. If I wanted to. The CDs are great, and I still have a lot of them too, but the thing that I don’t like it’s that they take up so much space (now that I’ve become more and more of a minimalist, or at least I try to be), plus I don’t even own a CD player right now.
When the MP3 came up and now all the music apps like Spotify made it so much easier to have all the albums you want on your phone. I like this current system.
Bands now don’t sell many records (as they did before). Mostly they make money touring and selling their merchandise items like t-shirts, but there are always fans that like to buy the physical album, as a collective item and to listen to it, as well. Yet this was reduced to buying the CD or the vinyl, but now some of them are editing their work on cassette too. Why? Cassettes are cheaper to make and they have an inherent retro vibe. Bands usually launch them as a limited collection, making it much more attractive to the fans.
CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital, are different formats yet all target the same objective, spreading a new work of art, music, and creation. Regardless of the format and your preferences, the important thing is always what’s inside, the content, the hearts, and the minds of these artists expressed through them.