One of the best and easiest ways to support independent artists and physical media…

It will surprise some to learn that the venerable Maxell tape is still in demand even though its distribution is limited to Japan after a decision by the parent company in 2020 to stop selling its UR ferric-oxide-based cassettes abroad. You can find them in very limited quantities on Amazon for around $12 USD for a single 120 minute UR cassette. The XLII-S tapes from our youth are no longer being manufactured.

Bummer.

If you read a lot of tech magazines, certain articles stick in your memory and a 2009 piece in Stuff addressed the viability of cassettes and concluded in a follow-up piece almost 9 years later that audio cassettes were dead like MTV.

The problem with that is that indie artists and labels discovered that younger music fans actually love the format and with hundreds of thousands of used tape decks floating around pawn shops, eBay, and vintage audio stores — there is a market still for the format.

But is anyone actually buying them?

According to the 2020 sales data, from sources in the United Kingdom, United States, and New Zealand — new cassette tape sales climbed over 100% in 2020 with more than 65,000 new albums sold in H1 2020 in England alone.

This article originally appeared at ecoustics.com and has been published here with permission.

Read the full article: https://www.ecoustics.com/articles/cassettes-refuse-to-die/