interesting info there plop still love playing tapes .

I think that since there are so many starting out bands with limited money to get their music heard the cassette tape offers cheap easy reproduction and distribution.  As years progress though the consumers that have working decks or Walkman keeps decreasing although the supply worldwide of decks and players is huge still.   The new culture is to into the instant gratification of I want to hear this song NOW.. and they can with MP3's.   Sadly they are a entire culture of people that have never heard really good quality music with the limited range and sharp harsher sound of MP3 recordings.  Yes there are much higher quality digital formats but nearly all the public still uses I believe the MP3 format and worse yet awful cheap quality headphones/earbuds.

   I dont think tapes will make a comeback but I believe for many years to come enough people will keep using it to keep it alive to some degree.  Like us collectors who actually use many of our Walkman or portable players or BBX's daily for the most part its nostalgia that drives us touching our joyful past.  When those of us that are in our late 30's, 40's, 50's 60's until our dying days will keep this media alive.  But when were gone I think the demise to a very few will finally put the cassette tape into the books of time and internet information.   Another 30-40 years and my prediction is the cassette tape except to a few will go the way of the Dodo Bird.... 

But I can always hope am wrong ;-)

i think you've hit the nail right on the head there JohnEdward

Whether comeback or not, fact is:

1962-2012. The audio cassette celebrates 50 years

a very interesting view they had there.....im all up for going back to tapes

Not a chance in Hell, the Digital age is here to stay

Unfortunately Glen is right.

It's too expensive for tape (pre-recorded) construction compared to CD and there just isn't enough of a market for it. Will it die out...not yet, but eventually.

I wish it wasn't the case, but as John mentioned, this generation wants instant gratification. MP3's and other formats don't need packaging, shipping or the vendor to stock. Just post the file and watch the $$ roll in.

That's the bottom line...$$$. If there was a substantial amount of cash to be made on vinatge cassettes, I'm sure Maxell, Fuji, Sony etc would be trumpeting these on every street corner.

I disagree with many of you. Just like vinyl, there is a resurgence going on with independent labels (sadly driven by Hipsters...)

Here is a sampling of labels that are currently issuing new recordings on tape...some of them ONLY issue on tape...

Already Dead Tapes, American Tapes, Bart Records, Bemböle Cassettes, Breaking World Records, Brown Interiour Music, Bum Tapes, Burger Records, Cakes and Tapes, Catholic Tapes, Cooper Cult, Crash Symbols, Crepusculo Negro, DNT Records, Econore, Fadal Records, Fairchild Tapes, Field Studies, Full Of Nothing, From the Wheelchair to the Pulpit, Green Records and Tapes, Gnar Tapes, Healing Light, Heresee, Holy Page, Hosehead Records, I had An Accident Records, Leaving Records, Life's Blood Aural Releasing Entity, Lillerne Tapes Lost Sound Tapes, Mellotronic Archive, Mirror Universe, Modern Tapes Moon Glyph, Night People, No Kings Record Cadre, Not Not Fun Records, Notes and Bolts Records and Tapes, Object Tapes, Obsolete Audio Formats, Olde English Spelling Bee, Otherworldly Mystics, Pizza Night, Pop Gun Recordings, Pug Records, Purr Tapes, Retirement Records, Retrograde Tapes, Roaches Watch TV, Sangoplasmo Records, Scotch Tapes, Silenzio Statico, Space Idea Tapes, Spookytown, Spring Break Tapes, Stunned Records, Tapeworm, Technicolor Yawn Tapes, Teen River, Thumbs Off Records, To Hip To Hop Tapes, Tour De Garde, Wohrt Records & Tapes, Woodsmoke and Workerbee Records.

Given this list...I ask those who say "tape will never come back"...are you sure?

(sadly driven by Hipsters...)

This sentence is why tapes will eventually go the way of the dodo bird. Yes many lower volume producers still use tape because the machines (used) are cheap and readily available, compared to a dust free CD production line. But it's catered to a select audience.

Once the hipsters move on I only hope there's a large enough crowd that will support this media....if not...we're it

BTW Welcome aboard!!

See this article for some more tape news

index.php?board_oid=193392314111653483&content_oid=296137596315684789

I love tape, and everyone on here loves tape. And all the millions that aren't on here love it too. Just look at the tape sales on that auction site. Try and buy a good deck off of CL...you will see what I mean! I have faith man! I have faith!!!

Thanks for the welcome too!

Let's make them understand through bloody revolution!

I just wish they still made high-bias tape...that would be enough for me.

Well, here is the guy who invented our beloved tape!

Oh yes, he is Dutch!

The world need sensible new generation personnel like you to cherish. Welcome to the 80's world and you wouldn't be disappointed!

I think we are slowly but surely entering the age where physical media in general is becoming a surplus no one wants any longer. Internet sites like iTunes and others allow for quick access to enormous music libraries and internet speeds are suffiecient for painless high definition video content so there's no need to go and borrow DVDs or Blu-Rays. 

The reason for this is cost naturally. Physical media require manufacturing facilities, materials and resources that cost a great deal. Licenses of different sorts, taxes and industry has to pay for environmental policies of respective countries. All of that costs money. Internet requires no such things. 

As a result, the quality of media has went down and I am having problems finding quality optical discs (DVDs and CDs) that will be suitable for long-term storage. The discs I recorded years ago still hold up perfectly while media that was recorded just fout of five years ago is now virtually unreadable even though it has been properly stored, away from sources of light or heat and in a humidity-free containers. It is "bad printing of the silver reflective surface" they tell me. Whatever it is, it is something that would have never happened ten years ago.

One fellow told me he bought the same album twice without even realizing he alread bought it a year ago. Why? Because we have lost touch with something that is real and something that is there. People download a thousand songs, fast forward each to last 30 seconds and then think they've heard it all. They chew it and then they spit it  out to be a but vulgar here but that's precisely what it is. People will always find ways to enjoy music but it will get more difficult and a large majority of us are not as strong-willed so are prepared to spend money on something new just because it is, well, new. Some of the finest studios in Croatia still use ADAT (Alesis digital audio tape) multi-track recording decks because it is what they are accustomed to and it is what has always worked and they won't replace it just because someone built a faster computer and someone else says their software is more powerful than it used to be. 

There are virtually hundreds of manufacturers that sell "hot water" today. Most of them specialize in so called "DACs" or in other words, digital-to-analog converters. Why? Well, because it is now possible to stream music from the internet or your computer in high resolution without any loss of quality. So they say at least and that is what they would like people to believe. While it is true that it has made the technology more affordable, I haven't found it to be better in any significant way than the standard transports that load phyiscal media. Certainly not better when audio quality is in question. It is not surprising that these manfacturers are working in tandem with music industry on eliminating the last bit of physocal formats. In fact, one particular fellow suggested people get rid of their transport systems (CD transports for example) in favor of their USB computer interface. Really?

The problem with all of these "manufacturers" is that they don't really "manufacture" anything. They didn't engineer anything nor did they invent anything. They stood on the shoulders of someone else and what they are doing now is repackaging and rebranding and waving with symbols like "high resolution" or "bitperfect playback" like a kid that's found his dad's gun. What they do is marketing and marketing alone and Chinese do the rest. That, unfortunately, has made the good things a lot more expensive so if one wants somethingthat has been developed for a specific purpose or engineered in a special way. he'll have to pay for it dearly. 

In the end, the tape as well as reel-to-reel were discontinued because the production was expensive. It required expertise in different categories - in chemistry engineering and especially in electro-chemical bonding and also electrical engineering. That required large plants, manufacturing facilities and human workforce. That time will never come again. 

High quality tape was used for studio recording and mastering and people archived their vinyl records on tape. Now, with digital workstations, it is pointless storing newly produced vinyl because even those records were made from digital masters. Archiving on tape makes very little sense. It's great if you're willing to pay for something like Reference recordings vinyl records that were done on ReVox machines. But not a lot of people will pay 50 quid for a record just so they could archive it on tape. 

It all looks very grim to me. But, if you're more like me and aren't surprised by the change of weather and is prepared to invest time and money in audio, it really is a nice hobby and one can enjoy it even more than our folks used to enjoy it when tapes were all around us. 

Cheers!

Antun

I would like to say a few more things.

A couole of years ago, the founder of Tapeheads.net forum and the members there (including there) signed a petition and delivered it to Maxell. The founder even went as far as talked to their management personally and negotiated a price. What we wanted to do is start manufacturing a Maxell reel-to-reel tape of decent quality. Maxell already had all the equipment and materials, but not the will to start anything. Naturally, we would have paid for it all and it would have come as a significant cost and each tape would cost more than it originally did. Nothing happened! The management decided not to go through with it and that was the last chance we would ever see anything from Maxell. 

On another occasion, a Tapeheads.net memeber started his own production of tapes that were called Phoenix. The line consisted of two type-II formulations and one type-IV formulation. The actual magnetic tape was from old Maxell's second-grade tape cakes. The cassette shells were sourced elsewhere and were or the very worst quality. Being second-grade, these tapes weren't brilliant and the metal was quite noisy. He sold a few hundred before he stopped. The prices were around 10 dollars for a single metal and thus two and half times more than the original Maxell Metal-CD used to cost in the late nineties. It wasn't nearly as good either and the Metal-CD was an entry-level metal to begin with.

The point? The expertise and materials I talked about in my previous post - they are nor cheap nor easy to attain.

In my previous post I also talked about how it is easy to attain digital expertise nowadays (at least in the eye of the customer for like I said, they don't manufacture anything but marketing). In the old days, this wasn't possible and one had to have extraordinary resources and be expertise in many fields of engineering. 

We won't live to see a day when tape becomes a reality again.

Very good read Antun. I agree with your conclusions as well.

Indie artists can now by-pass the big distributers and publish their electronic files right online. You don't need iTunes or anything. Many of the younger generation aren't concerned with audio quality so compressed files like Mp3's and such don't matter. They are the standard. Just take a look at the equipment they play them on (iPods, Phones, clock radios etc, bluetooth speakers.)

I always have a laugh at kids wearing $400.00 Beats cans on their ears, plugged into a $100.00 iPod...Priceless