mediageek called the cassette revival way before anyone

I’m not generally one for tooting my own horn, but here at the end of 2009 it looks like I was a good two years ahead of the curve when I predicted the cassette revival waayyyy back in February of 20022007. I must admit that my prediction was a bit tongue-in-cheek, not so much because I didn’t think it was possible or reasonable, but because my cynical side can’t help but be a little…er, cynical, about resurgences of technology recently considered passé or obsolete.

Earlier this year I noted the appearance of more cassette-based indie rock labels, mostly dealing in very limited-edition runs of EPs and albums. My own recent travels to record stores like Aquarius in San Francisco and Reckless in Chicago turned up small cassette sections in both store where just a couple of years ago there had been none.

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.

The Irony of the Vinyl Resurgence

Back in the 1980s when the Compact Disc first hit the market there was great excitement in the high fidelity and audiophile world anticipating the arrival of crystal-clean digital sound that would be unmarred by the vagaries of analog playback long suffered by music lovers. Whether vinyl LPs’ clicks and pops or cassette tapes’ hiss, never mind the inconvenience of turning over sides (auto-reverse cassette decks were still a rich man’s luxury), CD not only promised markedly improved sound but the additional convenience of playing a full 74 minutes of uninterrupted tunes and the ability to skip tracks with the push of a button.

Yet, even as much of the audio, electronics and mainstream press swooned over the new digital audio technology, CD had its critics, too. One of the most famous early attacks came from record producer Doug Sax, published in Billboard and Stereophile magazine in 1983. Sax wrote, in part,

[W]hat I have heard on many players, and on more discs than I would ever care to listen to again, is mediocre sound, sound that is often unappealing and fatiguing. …

I have been on record, since I first heard a digital master tape, that there is an enormous price to be paid, in musical terms, for the noise-free performance of digital.

Reading these words today one should hear their echoes in much of what’s been written about the resurgence of vinyl LPs in the last few years. Of course, now music lovers aren’t just dissing CDs, but pitting LPs against the MP3, which is arguably sonically inferior to the CD it’s coming to replace.

Now a generation after the CD’s introduction we have a vinyl revival, which includes a veritable renaissance in the availability of not just new LP records but turntables and record players. I remember searching for a new turntable back in 1996 to replace my aging plastic Onkyo ‘table that I bought in 1987. Even in small hi-fi shops catering to a audiophile crowd I found it difficult to find any turntables under $1000 or so that would offer much improvement over my 80s vintage Onkyo.

The problems of noise and poor sound quality with cheap turntables in the 80s is what ostensibly drew people to CDs in the 90s. Back in the 80s a lot of people relied on inexpensive compact stereos sold at discount stores. These stereos typically had a turntable, cassette deck and radio, paired with speakers, all for one or two hundred bucks. While capable of playing music, these systems didn’t tend to have outstanding quality in any element of playback, especially vinyl. You’ll still find these stereos in thrift stores and at garage sales, and if you look you’ll find that almost universally they have very flimsy, all-plastic record players.

Even the more expensive so-called rack systems of the day often didn’t feature turntables of much higher quality, even at price points of $500 or more. Those ‘tables would usually be separate components, but still made of 75% plastic. If you were lucky the platter and tonearm might contain some metal.

Playing records is a completely physical process that is very susceptible to the basic forces of Newtonian physics. If you’ve ever stomped around a turntable playing a record then you probably know how easy it is to make it skip. But it’s not just blunt force that takes its toll. So does vibration and electrical interference from other devices, including other stereo components. The prevalent plastic turntables and stereos of the 80s and early 90s have very little in their construction to shield against these quality-killers — most of the time you were lucky if the turntable had some little rubber feet providing some modicum of insulation.

For the average record listener in the 1980s and 90s, the usual listening experience was littered with surface noise, pops, clicks, skips and jumps that was unfairly blamed on the medium of vinyl records, when much of the fault lay upon the cheap, flimsy playback apparatus. So it was a revelation when these listeners first heard the unfamiliar silence between tracks on a CD where before they’d expected hiss and scratches. Instead of having to listen through the noise for the music, CDs sounded as if the fog of analog grunge had been lifted.

Unlike the enormous difference between the typical plastic turntable and a truly high-fidelity model, by the 1990s even relatively inexpensive CD players delivered on the fundamental promises of noise and skip-free sound.

I’m sure it’s like the shift from black and white to color TV, or from AM to FM radio was for previous generations. For those of us who remember the first time we heard CDs it’s not hard to understand how they quickly took over. Most folks who didn’t spend thousands of dollars on stereo gear truly did experience a step forward in quality and convenience.

Still, Doug Sax was not alone. A minority of music lovers chose to stick to vinyl believing it to sound better than CDs. These audiophiles likely owned turntables costing more than an average person’s stereo, TV and music collection combined, which also delivered on the potential of vinyl’s fidelity. Many others stuck with records for practical reasons–like DJs did–or because they were happy enough with their records. I suspect a lot of people, like myself, stuck with records while also moving to CDs, choosing to enjoy the records we owned while buying new music on CD.

Whatever the reason, those of us who stuck with records are enjoying the vinyl renaissance because it means more turntables, more new records and, strangely enough, some degree of cred. At the same time, I also see a step backwards that isn’t so satisfying.

Now that vinyl is retro-popular again it’s ironic that people are flocking to the same sort of cheap plastic turntables that scared folks away from LPs twenty years ago. Within the last year the gadget landscape has been inundated with turntables that connect to your computer by USB, or are attached to CD burners, or which now even record your LPs as MP3s directly to a thumb drive. But almost every single one of these ‘tables is pretty much a plastic late 80s design with some extra digital electronics tacked on. All the more ironic is the fact that the supposed benefit of these new plastic wonders is their ability to let you convert your precious analog records to digital, extra clicks, hiss, pops, skips and all.

I’m not spitting in the face of utility. If you have records which are rare, out of print, irreplaceable, never released on CD or just of sentimental value then I can certainly see why easily archiving them to digital is desirable. What I don’t understand so much is why you’d want to do this archiving at such a low level of quality.

It’s not just these new digitizing turntables. There’s also been an explosion in 80s style compact turntable stereos dressed up in early 20th century retro clothes. Sure the cabinets might look like wood, but inside the record player is the same crap plastic used in that Emerson stereo someone got for Christmas in 1987. Moreover, because the speakers are in the same cabinet, introducing more vibration and interference into the game, these new retro all-in-ones arguably sound worse than the cheap 80s stereo

The funny thing about this is that it’s possible to get a pretty nice sounding turntable made out of very little plastic for less than $300. While not chump change, this is actually about the same as what a decent turntable would have cost in the 80s. Adjusted for inflation, the quality turntable in 2008 costs about $156 in 1985 dollars — less than what you’ve had paid for a flimsy plastic all-in-one stereo.

If you’re willing to invest a little more time and go used, you can pick up nice quality turntables made out of metal and wood that would have cost more than $300 in the 80s for a fraction of that price. Just add a new stylus or cartridge, maybe a new belt, and you’re good to go.

The same phenomenon is happening with cassettes too. There’s almost a double-irony with tapes, which outsold records in the late 80s, before CDs trounced them in the 90s. Besides the convenience of the walkman and car stereo, one of the reasons many people switched to tapes was because they didn’t skip and have quite as much obvious noise as records did (when played on their cheap K-Mart stereos).

Despite my semi-facetious predictions to the contrary, it doesn’t look like a full-on vinylesque revival is happening for cassettes. Nevertheless, USB-connected cassette decks have started to trickle into the marketplace offering up the ability to digitize your tape memories with relative ease. The tech and popular press reaction seems to be a bit more muted for the cassette revival, at least in part because cassettes haven’t quite faded away as much as vinyl had.

I was just a little bit heartened to read a recent CNet review of one USB cassette deck that clearly revealed the flimsy plastic under the flashy digital veneer:

Aside from the USB port on the back, the TapeLink is no better than the cassette deck you probably had in the 1980s, and lacks conveniences such as autoreverse.

More so than with records, I can understand wanting to digitize old cassettes, especially mix tapes or other custom tapes that are difficult to replace or have sentimental value. I’ll also bet that most home recorded tapes were probably created on a plastic 1980s compact stereo to begin with, so there’s likely not so much fidelity lost when digitized using a new deck of similar quality. Of course, if you happen to have a higher fidelity tape–and cassettes could be capable of fine fidelity–you’d probably want to seek out a better, probably non-USB, cassette deck.

While I’m glad to see the resurgence in vinyl and analog music playback in general, I really wish the lessons of the past better informed today’s record enthusiasts–especially those old enough to remember those tacky Emerson, Yorx and Lloyd’s discount store stereos. I fear that for many new or revived record listeners the thin fidelity of these retro-plastic wonders will cause them to tire of vinyl quickly, making LPs more of a novelty than anything else.

Folks got tired of vinyl in the 80s and 90s for a reason: cheap crap plastic turntables. Avoid them now and you’ll still be enjoying your records when you’re less well-equipped friends have tired of their new collections already.

Rumors of VHS’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Oh, planned obsolescence, you are such an insistent mistress.

It seems like the end of the year news hole combined with the imminent digital TV transition (which does not necessarily mean the end of analog TV…) has sparked additional interest in the press ringing the funeral bells for that most ubiquitous yet unloved video medium, the VHS videocassette. The renewed attentiveness was triggered by a recent LA Times article about the last remaining supplier of pre-recorded VHS tapes to retail stores. The discount supplier tells Times reporter Geoff Boucher,

Photo credit: the waving cat / flickr

“It’s dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt,” said Kugler, 34, a Burbank businessman. “I was the last one buying VHS and the last one selling it, and I’m done. Anything left in warehouse we’ll just give away or throw away.”

Boucher notes that the last major Hollywood release on VHS was 2006’s “The History of Violence.” However, that does not mean it’s the last VHS release, since there are certainly direct-to-video, corporate, promotional and independent releases still being churned out on videocassettes. And that’s just US market. What about VHS in less developed nations especially India and Latin America, where the push to new formats goes slower because there’s that much less disposible income?

I don’t have a beef with Boucher’s article so much as the second-order press and blogosphere reaction that seizes upon the “VHS is dead” meme rather than the more specific point that the production and distribution of pre-recorded VHS movies are ending. My problem is two-fold. First, I can’t help but think the minor panic-inducing tone of the overall reportage is timed and focused in order to help drive DVD and Blu-Ray sales, especially amongst the digital disc holdouts who up to now have been satisfied with their VHS collection.

Second, it’s overly simplistic to say that VHS is dead just because prerecorded tapes will become more scarce in 2009. One of the most disruptive aspects of home videocassette technology is the fact that it’s recordable; with a VHS VCR you don’t have to simply rely on a steady stream of commercially prerecorded content. I’m willing to bet that millions of VHS VCRs are still in service across the US doing just that — recording someone’s favorite movie on TV or timeshifting a favorite TV program.

Sure, millions of people have shifted to using DVD recorders or DVRs for that purpose, or are time-shifting by watching things online. But that population is still a small percentage of the whole, characterized by having the income necessary to afford these more expensive technologies, combined with the knowledge, interest and will to use them. VHS is dead for a certain class of people, but not the whole country.

Nevertheless, it is true, as one TV report said, that “VHS’ days appear numbered. ” But then, that’s been true pretty much since the first year of DVD, when that technology went on to set records for fast large-scale adoption. Even then the writing was on the wall, just as it is with nearly every single consumer electronics technology ever introduced. Do not doubt that from the time when the first VHS recorder rolled off the assembly line that the electronics giants didn’t have dozens of designs for its successor on the drawing board. It just took until 1997 for DVD to strike the right combination of size, convenience, image quality and price.

Obsolescence is not a natural process, but one planned right into the consumer economy. Now, I’m not arguing against innovations and the succession of technologies with better, more attractive qualities and greater utility. I certainly barely watch VHS tapes myself, and mostly rely on my DVR and on DVDs. So VHS is not a vibrant everyday technology in my household. Yet, that does not mean VHS is useless or dead.

Of course this is the sunset for VHS, but I question the rush to scare people into buying new technologies. Certainly, my recommendation to anyone who has VHS tapes that have irreplaceable stuff on them to consider copying them to DVD, whether it’s a home video or an out-of-print movie (you don’t even need your own DVD recorder — most chain drug stores in the US will do it for you). But that’s as much because of the inevitable slow degradation of magnetic media as it is the eventual death of VHS. I’d make the same recommendation if your precious memories are on DVD — though copying a rare commercially recorded disc will prove more difficult due to digital rights management.

Some justification for declaring VHS’ death rests upon the analog TV transition happening in February. And while it is true that your old VHS workhorse will not be able to record the new digital signals directly, it’s not counted out. The first reason why is that if you still have an analog TV and are using a cable converter box or one of the digital converter boxes for over-the-air broadcasts, then your VCR should still be able to record their digital output. Furthermore, even new digital TVs still have analog inputs for VCRs, DVD players, game consoles and the like, and will continue to have them for a long time. So getting a new flat-panel TV doesn’t mean you can’t still watch your VHS tapes.

Let’s remember that vinyl records and cassettes were declared dead in the early 90s when CDs finally became predominant. And yet, here we are in 2009 and we’re reading about the minor resurgence of vinyl, and you can still buy new books on tape. Sure, you’re not going to find the newest rock albums on new cassette, and new vinyl LPs are still made in tiny numbers compared to CDs. Yet that does not qualify a format as “dead.”

It’s arguable that the LP resurgence is driven both by nostalgia and a hardcore minority that has contended that vinyl sounds better and therefore stuck with the format through the CD era. Cassettes also have some nostalgic allure for many, especially when it comes to memories of mix tapes, while having a much tinier fanbase who cling to the format for its sheer fidelity. I think it’s too early to tell if there will be gathering nostalgia for the lowly VHS videotape in the same way. I’m not sure people have the same emotional attachments to recordings of TV shows and movies that they have for music… but that could just be me.

If you’re wanting to rent or buy the newest Hollywood movie releases then you’re going to need a DVD player — but then, just about anyone with that desire in the US already knows that and has made the appropriate decision. If you’ve still got a VHS VCR and are happily using it there’s no need to panic. Now might not be a bad time to pick up a spare VCR if you can afford it, nor is it a bad time to consider making DVD backups of anything that’s really valuable to you.

But make no mistake, there’s no indication that you won’t be able to buy a new VCR or blank VHS taps for quite some time to come. Unlike Polaroid film or other single-manufacturer technologies, VHS was licensed far and wide. As long as there’s a buck to be made making and selling recorders and tapes, they’ll be out there.

Like cassettes and vinyl records, VHS tapes and VCRs will continue to live alongside the technologies that are supposed to replace them. Going out of favor does not mean obsolete.

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Don’t Be Spooked by Threats of Obsolesence

One of the unfortunate effects of our capitalist economy is the constant drive for new and better. Well, really it’s mostly new and novel, with better being a secondary consideration. That means obsolescence is something that constantly looms over industrial products, especially tech products. But obsolete does not equate with useless or worthless–not remotely.

With the rising popularity of digitally downloaded music, whether through file sharing or an online store, the imminent death of the physical compact disc continues to be predicted. The cries have become louder in the last few weeks as Atlantic Records announced that its digital download sales (which includes ringtones) surpassed its sales of physical CDs.

I’ll admit that these days I probably listen to more MP3s than CDs, especially on the go. Yet, I still have a collection of over 1000 CDs, most of which I have not ripped to MP3–my MP3 collection is comprised mostly of purchased music and stuff I’ve traded with friends. I do still listen to CDs, especially when I want to listen critically. I realize that absolute fidelity is only one factor in how we choose to listen to music, it’s still important to me and many other people. While MP3s and other compressed files can sound quite good, they are no match for the uncompressed source.

That’s why I’m not surprised to read a Wired Gadget Lab post directing me to this story from the UK’s Telegraph reporting that the sales of portable CD players there are up 50 percent over last year. Amongst the reasons they cite are price ( I’ve seen units here sell for $15 or less) and the fact that many people find using a computer to download to an MP3 player to be difficult.

One very obvious reason I want to add to the list is that maybe a whole lot of people aren’t interested in giving up their CDs in the first place. If you aren’t interested in dealing with the iTunes music store (especially if you don’t want to pay the iPod price premium) or any other online music store, and you don’t relish the task of having to rip and compress your CDs yourself I can see how the supposed convenience offered by MP3 players and digital files can look pretty darn inconvenient.

Folks over 30 can probably remember when they got their first CD player, moving over from listening primarily to vinyl LPs or cassettes. I knew a lot of people who all but dumped their analog music collections for CDs in the early 90s, lured in by the promises of better sound quality and convenience. By and large those promises were fulfilled, compared to the lo- to mid-fi sound experiences most people were accustomed to getting from inexpensive cassette and record players. But it was also a pretty big cash outlay for a lot of people, many of whom replaced their music collections with the same titles on CD as the popular press sounded the funeral march for the soon-to-be-obsolete vinyl LP.

Now twenty-six years after the introduction of the CD we have none other than the New York Times writing about the resurgent interest in vinyl records, sales of which are up 36% this year. Weren’t these fragile, scratchable, pop-and-click-filled analog dinosaurs supposed to be a curious historical artifact by now?

Myself, I never abandoned my record collection. When I bought my first CD player in 1987 I also bought my first decent turntable. From 1988 through the mid-90s I really cleaned up buying used vinyl for a song as other music lovers dumped their obsolete analog archives. I still buy both used and new vinyl, though since the big purge of the early-90s the good stuff isn’t quite as cheap anymore.

I’m sure a fair majority of the folks who dumped their vinyl for CDs have never looked back. But I’ve talked to and read about plenty more people who are buying new turntables to play their last remaining albums that never turned up on CD, or who are even going out and rebuying LPs they got rid of because their CDs just don’t cut it.

So keep this in mind when you hear bloggers and the press declaring the end of the CD and all physical media. It makes complete sense to me that sales of portable CD players are up because I can believe there are plenty of people who just want something will play all the music they’ve acquired without all the hassle of ripping and storing MP3s. Why “upgrade” to MP3s and iPods if CDs still work just fine and you’ve already got an investment in music on CD?

Of course, I do think the trend towards digital files and mass storage is real and underway — I do have a couple hundred gigs of MP3s on a server at home. But these technologies tend to live side-by-side for far longer than the technorati recognize. The cassette didn’t kill the LP, the DVD still hasn’t killed VHS, and the iPod won’t kill the CD. Even formats often joked about as comparative failures lived almost as long as the CD has–from laserdiscs (in production 1978-1999) to 8-tracks (1964 – 1988)–and still have their fans using them everyday.

The newest and shiniest technology can be very seductive, but utility is what wins the day. For a lot of formats there eventually does come a day when finding a working player becomes harder and harder. But for something as ubiquitous as the LP, cassette or CD that moment is a long way away.

The folks snapping up CD players this holiday season aren’t technophobes or luddites, they’re just reasonable folks who maybe don’t want to foolishly abandon the shiny little discs they spent good money for.