credit: Steve the Alien / flicr

But the real cherry on top was stumbling across recent posts all about cassettes at Stereophile magazine, the home of super high-end audiophiles, where CD players can cost $17,000 and speakers require a second mortgage. Stereophile’s Stephen Mejias was himself spurred to think on the subject of tapes by a recent article by Calum Marsh in PopMatters, “Reconsidering the Revival of Cassette Tape Culture.” Critical as Marsh may be about this ferric oxide return, his very tackling of the subject admits one simple fact: a cassette revival indeed has occurred.

And who was there first? Uh huh, that would be the mediageek.

Aside from the fact of my first arrival, however, I’m rather ambivalent on the whole debate on whether or not the cassette revival is just crass indie-marketing sheathed in manufactured street-cred. For those with still serviceable cassette decks I guess it’s kind of nice to be able to get some new tunes that you didn’t have record yourself. At the same time, the reason I have working cassette decks is because I still have music on cassette not duplicated in another medium, and I still find albums on cassette that are expensive or nearly impossible to find in another medium. I guess these special cassette-only releases qualify, in a way, though by design, not happenstance.

It’s not like cassette-only labels are anything new. Labels like ROIR were cassette-only back in the 1980s, and many cassette-only labels have survived in the interim due to economics and ease of one-off duplication and distribution, if for no other reason. The only reason we can call it a trend now is that bands that otherwise have seen relative indie success distributing their music on CDs are turning to cassette labels for limited editions. If it was still mostly the domain of bedroom noise and industrial bands, we probably wouldn’t be reading about this trend in as mainstream a pub as Stereophile.

Now that indie rock collectors and other hip elites can snarf up limited tunes on cassette I’m wondering if we’ll start seeing more plastic fantastic decks show up in Target, and if the used market will inflate. If you’d taken my advice two years ago then you’d probably be sitting pretty on a nice deck that sold for hundreds in the 80s but that would’ve cost you $15. You’ll be spending more on a super-exclusive new tape by a bunch of bearded guys from Portland.

Now I’ll sit back and see if this hot new trend makes it all the way through 2010 and outlives being a trend, like the vinyl resurgence has. Meanwhile, I’ll remind you that my hipster trend-spotting consultancy is still in business, but my rates are going up fast.

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credit: Steve the Alien / flicr

Wired’s Epicenter blog recently compiled “10 Weird Ways to Distribute Music.” But, really, the list might be more accurately characterized as “10 Unique Ways,” rather than weird. Seems that some popular indie bands like Dirty Projectors are now releasing some albums on cassette again, making the format #8 on Wired’s list. At least blogger Eliot Van Buskirk had the good taste of linking to my somewhat tongue-in-cheek 2007 post titled, “Next Big Retro Thing: The Cassette Revival.”

Of course, distributing new music on cassettes stands out only because the format’s been largely abandoned by the mainstream. I emphasize new music because I’ve certainly seen cheap cassette compilations of country classics and oldies still turn up at truck stops and dollar stores. Cassette-only labels were an underground music fixture in the 80s and 90s due to both the low cost of doing limited edition releases and the relative ubiquity of cassette players.

While mostly overtaken by CD-Rs and downloadable MP3s, cassette labels have survived. Plustapes is a Chicago-based label putting out new independent music on cassette each in limited editions of a hundred or so. Earlier this year the music blog Expressway to My Skull compiled a list of active cassette-only labels and places to find them.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of releasing music on cassette is that it’s possible to record and duplicate albums entirely in the analog domain easily and cheaply without a computer. If you want to get fancy you can find a cassette four-track at a thrift or pawn shop so you have more recording and editing flexibility. Then get a dubbing deck and you’re set. It doesn’t have to be about analog fetishism — it can simply be about being cheap.

Perhaps the enduring charm of the cassette has to do with its fundamental nature as a recording medium that is very accessible, but imposes real practical limits on its duplication. It’s easy for nearly anyone to duplicate several dozen cassettes using inexpensive dubbing decks, but quantities of much more than that require commercial duplicating services. Like ‘zines, cassettes can be a near-mass medium, where you can reach hundreds with a work that the creator still fashioned and touched with her own hands.

Now that we can take for granted the ability to reach a nearly unlimited audience with a perfectly-duplicable MP3 file, there’s something to be said for a sound medium that can’t be had by anyone with a ‘net connection, that didn’t roll off an assembly line. It doesn’t have to be a case of internet vs. cassette; I think there’s room for both to coexist, even in symbiosis.

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