Cassettes Are a Weird Way to Distribute Music?

My, oh my, where has the time gone. Sure, cassettes might be nearly obsolete and decidedly retro. But weird?

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.

On Tonight’s Radio Show: The Value of Retro & Vintage Technology

On tonight’s radioshow my guest with be Bohus Blahut, one of the bloggers behind the popular Retro Thing blog which tracks vintage gadgets and technology. It’s a site I’ve been reading for a couple of years not just because I have my own love for vintage tech, but because I think there’s value in holding on to, preserving and finding continual usefulness in the tools and gadgets which the mainstream consumer products industry would have us believe need to be tossed out and replaced.

Bohus lives in Chicago, so he’ll be live in the studio which gives us an opportunity to take some calls in the second half of the show. If you’re in the Chicago area, listen live at 9 PM CST on WNUR 89.3 FM, or tune in online (live stream). The studio line is 847-866-WNUR (9687). If you miss the live airing, catch it online at the radioshow website, or any of the show’s affiliate stations like WRFA, Jamestown, NY and WTND, Macomb, IL.

Watch Those VHS Tapes!

It was only ten years ago when DVD players cost over 500 bucks. And it seems like only yesterday that people were trampling each other in Wal-Mart on Black Friday to buy up $25 DVD players.

At this point we’ve probably all taken for granted the inevitable obsolescence of the VHS video tape. Yet, how many of us have shelves or closets full of tapes? Movies we never bought on DVD (or still aren’t available), stuff we taped off TV, home videos or maybe even tapes that have still gone unwatched.

Now we have one more reason to get ourselves in gear to go through those tapes and see what’s worth keeping, watching or preserving. JVC, the inventor of VHS, has confirmed that it has quit making stand-alone VHS VCRs. While there are still many VCRs left in the supply-chain, when they’re gone, they’re gone. As goes JVC, likely that’s the way the rest of the industry goes.

Nevertheless, with millions, if not billions, of tapes out there in the world, it’s probably a little premature to sound the final death knell for VHS. While stand-alone VHS VCRs that do nothing but play and record VHS are disappearing, JVC–along with several other manufacturers–is still making combo units that combine a DVD player or recorder with the VHS VCR.

Still, I wonder how long until we start seeing a dwindling number of these combo units on store shelves. it doesn’t look like BluRay is ready to take of quite like DVD did nearly a decade ago, but it’s fair to say that DVD is now not far from the place VHS was at the turn of the century, when VCRs dropped under $50 and tapes became bargain-bin items.

The point here is to see the writing on the wall and take steps to evaluate and preserve your VHS collection. That can mean stockpiling VCRs for the time when finding a working player gets more difficult, or–perhaps more efficiently–copying your favorite or irreplaceable tapes over to DVD-R.

If your favorite tapes are recorded off TV or in a camcorder you’ll have no problems making the copy using a VHS/DVD-R combo deck. However, if your favorite VHS tape is a commercially produced program your combo deck will balk at making the copy, thanks to Macrovision and the DMCA — even if that program isn’t otherwise available on DVD.

You can find so-called “video stabilizers” online that pretty effectively remove the macrovision copy protection from the analog VHS signal to record to DVD. But to use them you have to have a standalone VHS deck and DVD recorder, not a combo unit. Although, you could use two combo units, playing from one unit’s VHS deck to the other’s DVD recorder.

Another option would be to kick-start the latent VHS fan movement. It seems like plenty of forgotten technologies, from 8-track tapes to 78 records, so why not VHS? As the most popular analog video format you’d think that there’s got to be some underdog passion out there for it, whether due to forgotten cult classics only available on tape, or appreciation for its retro analog charms. Invite friends over to watch movies taped of late-night cable in the 1980s, or home videos from the early 90s.

Or maybe it’s time for all-VHS pirate TV when the analog turnoff happens in February.