Sales of cassettes in the UK have reached their highest level since 2003, following vinyl records in a small, nostalgia-fuelled resurgence. Five readers told us why they prefer to listen to supposedly obsolete tapes.
‘You have no way to skip tracks, which makes it more special’
“Buying a cassette direct from an independent artist on platforms such as Bandcamp is such a fun way to consume music. Often produced in very small runs, it is nice to receive something though the post that is relatively scarce. In these days of Spotify funnelling payments only to the superstars, it feels good to support small artists and labels. I love vinyl, too, but the magic of a cassette is that you have no way to skip tracks; you press ‘play’ and listen from start to finish with only the satisfying thud of one side ending to interrupt the experience. The noisy, tactile controls of a cassette player are the perfect tonic to the ways most of us consume media throughout the day, making it more of a special event and something to look forward to.” Dan White, 40, Norwich
‘My 12-year-old daughter listens to Bon Jovi on hers’
“There seems to be a huge 90s revival in fashion and classic TV from when I was a kid. My daughter, 12, has had a cassette player bought for her birthday, and is now listening to all the music I did growing up. Ebay and local record stores have been great for finding 90s music and she loves my old mix tapes. She listens to all kinds of music, but she asked specifically for Bon Jovi and Aerosmith tapes, which we bought for her birthday. She also wants Guns N’ Roses, Abba, East 17, but we haven’t got those yet. All her friends loved it when she took it to school.” Elisabeth Stagg, 38, Upminster
‘They have more depth than CDs – I know this is technically wrong’
“I listen to cassettes daily. And vinyl, and CDs. It depends what I want to listen to and which format it’s on. Cassettes, though – and I know this is technically wrong – sound as though they have much more depth than the CDs. I’ve tried one after the other and believe I can hear a better sound from the cassette. With a twin cassette deck hooked up to my 1986 Bang & Olufsen system, it means I have continuous music from two tapes playing both sides on a loop – unlike the single CD player or a vinyl record, which you have to turn over when one side is finished.” Tim, 50, Wiltshire
‘My co-worker sneaks into my office and changes the music to prog rock’
“After finally getting rid of my car with a cassette player in it, I’ve been given a radio cassette player, which is in my office with my old cassettes, from the Stranglers, the Kinks, and the Beatles to the LA’s, Pogues, Clannad and, most importantly, AC/DC, which I used to fall asleep to in my youth.
“My big brother died a few years ago and I have some of the tapes of his that I nicked from him when we were teenagers, such as Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple and UFO – he first got me into rock and metal. My co-worker is in the office next door, but I always know when he’s been sneaking in and working at my desk when the music has been surreptitiously changed to his prog rock stuff, which I no longer approve of. The machine I’m currently using was supplied by my partner and has extra big buttons designed for sight-impaired folk, or elderly folk such as myself.” Carole, 55, Huddersfield
‘Recording our music on tape made us take our jam sessions more seriously’
“The first album I ever bought was on cassette: Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms. Cassettes were my main way to consume music from childhood until I bought a Creative Zen MP3 player in the late noughties.
“I like to create my own music and collaborate with others. After rediscovering the atmosphere and sound of cassettes, I abandoned recording on to my laptop or PC and began using straight-to-audio cassette. I found this focused jam sessions. No longer would me and my friends just endlessly twiddle about for hours thinking, ‘we’ll sift through it all later’. Instead, there was physical tape being consumed and we only had so much of it, so we took the sessions more seriously. It wasn’t the intention when we started, but was a happy side-effect of recording on tape.” Charles Daniels, 45, Oxford