Home Taping Is Killing Music

September 1, 2023 8:51 AM

Casseptember! Sixty years of cassette tape culture: BBC Radio 3 "...will feature specially-commissioned works from an array of artists whose work makes use of the particular qualities unique to the cassette tape. And, throughout the month, we’ll also hear from dedicated collectors and artists with a soft spot for the format." [hissssss << tktktkt >> KA-CHUNK]
posted by not_on_display (19 comments total)

Taking bids for a high quality 12in reel-to-reel off the air recording of all Taylor Swifts original songs during the Mephis Swiftathon.

(not really but this should famously take down the mefi servers, cackles madly ah ha ha hah ha)
posted by sammyo at 9:13 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think the Nakamichi 550 was the best cassette recorder ever made. It’s audio quality was amazing.
posted by bz at 9:17 AM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Looking forward to this. As a teenaged Guy, my cassette collection was a physical manifestation of everything music meant to me. Its diversity and its power to be my paint brush, my poet's pen, my armor and sword, my wine and roses. Even though it wasn't me making it, it was how I identified in private and how I stepped out into the world. So many memories of trying to catch whole songs when recording the radio or making agonizingly specific mix tapes, to the tragedy of favorite cassettes being eaten by the player (and cleaning the heads and rollers with Q-tips).

On the killing music front, I remember that cassettes are where the blank media tax (that persists to this day) started. But my favorite cassette "piracy" story is this:

I had a friend who, for her 12th birthday, wanted the album "Fly By Night" by Rush for her birthday, and wanted it on cassette. After pestering my father, he called around and failing to find it on cassette, brought home the album on vinyl and a blank cassette and told me, "we'll record it on to the tape and then you can give both of them to her and just explain that they didn't have any cassette copies at the store." So, on her birthday I told my friend this, and she told me that she didn't have any use for the record, that she just wanted the cassette. So in what would seem an early example of piracy, one copy was sold but two people had the album. It was exactly what the record company feared. However, Rush became my favorite band and I spent unholy amounts of money buying every single one of their albums (sometimes in multiple formats over the years). So while it's possible that the band would have come across my radar at some point, I think it can be safely argued that, that early act of musical piracy made the record company something like 50 times the amount of money lost on the duplication.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 9:22 AM on September 1, 2023 [12 favorites]

Since it's not on for a couple more hours I have time to dig my old boombox out of the attic, dust it off, and flip through my cassette collection to see which one I can tape over!
posted by chavenet at 9:47 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I started my university studies at this amazing crossroads in time where CD players dropped in price and most record stores switched over, yet the copyright acts had not kicked into gear yet.

Which meant there was a store on campus (That's Rentertainment! for you UIUC alums) that not only rented CDs for a buck a day, they sold cases of blank tapes from behind the counter with a wink and smile.

I built up an amazing library of tapes that year. Such great memories. And then it ended.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:29 AM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

I think the Nakamichi 550 was the best cassette recorder ever made. It’s audio quality was amazing.

I think I had one of those. First purchase I made after a long summer working way up north. As my dad said, you can afford quality, you should buy quality.

I still have a BX-125 in my rack. Bought it used over twenty years ago and it still works a charm.
posted by philip-random at 10:46 AM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

I loved the physicality of cassette tapes. One of my stupid pandemic projects was a web component that operates like cassette player for playing audio files, to the point where you have to eject and reinsert the tape to play the second half. I used it to share a few mix tapes with my friends, who said kind things about my implementation but nothing good about my taste in music.
posted by AndrewStephens at 11:30 AM on September 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

I still have a BX-125 in my rack. Bought it used over twenty years ago and it still works a charm.

My friend stumbled across a BX-150 (pretty much the same thing) in his local pawn shop for $15 (!!) many many years ago and got it for me because he knew my old cassette deck had recently died. Like philip-random's experience it has served me without a hitch ever since.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:23 PM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

My favorite thing about cassettes is that you essentially played them start to end - no skipping to the next song. Thus the order you had put songs on them (from the radio of course) would become the order. To this day when a certain song ends I will expect another to start all because of some tape I made in the 80s.
posted by thijsk at 2:48 PM on September 1, 2023 [9 favorites]

When I was in high school I was always listening to music. Mostly on tape. And when I went on school trips, I would take my music library with me in two Bolla wine boxes like this. So, two boxes of tapes, plus an off-brand Walkman clone, plus two Radio Shack brand portable speakers like this. Plus cheap little headphones. And then, of course, my clothes etc. It was an enormous PITA to haul all of that stuff around, but I did it. And wherever I ended up - usually a hotel room - I would set everything up so that I could experience that sweet XLII-S sound.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:48 PM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just saw an advert for High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape book which comes out in October.
posted by user92371 at 4:11 PM on September 1, 2023

To this day when a certain song ends I will expect another to start all because of some tape I made in the 80s.

One song I taped off of an LP album decades ago included a slight shudder when the shelf the turntable was on got bumped slightly, or something. I listened to that tape so many times that despite having bought the CD version a few years later and listened to that ever since, I still wait for the shudder at that particular part of the song even though I know it's won't happen anymore. I'll carry the memory of that recording defect with me till the day I die.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:58 PM on September 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

When I worked in a stereo store I used to ask customers who bought a box of Maxell tapes if they wanted the big gold sticker on the packaging, which in sufficient quantity could be redeemed for sharper-image-esque prizes. I ended up with enough to claim two folding directors chairs with "Maxell" emblazoned on the back.

I am fairly sure this was against the rules, but it was the early 80's and pulling stunts like this was the style at the time.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:24 PM on September 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

It’s interesting to hear recollections about cassettes from Radio 3/Late Junction - as they are mainly about classical music. And the particular gripes that classical music fans had about the medium were different from those of us who were taping top 40 songs. How do you break up a long piece of music into 45 minute chunks? What about that really quiet passage where you must either live with the hiss or turn on Dolby to mess with the range? What about pieces with a huge dynamic range? All these limitations were surely in the mind of those cooking up the standard for CDs when they arranged them to be sufficiently capacious to accommodate Karajan’s rendition of Beethoven’s 9th, 74 mins. Maybe.
posted by rongorongo at 2:14 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

When I worked in a stereo store I used to ask customers who bought a box of Maxell tapes if they wanted the big gold sticker on the packaging,

MaxPoints. I probably have a few hundred still sitting around. I also have an ashtray full of little plastic "write protect" tabs.

How do you break up a long piece of music into 45 minute chunks?

Let's see, the band started with Scarlet->Fire, then Women Are Smarter, the new song It's All Too Much, then they start PLAYING IN THE BAND! I'm on a 110, so I have 55 minutes to get into drums and I'm not going to make it.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

Well, what *I* did was "Get Lucky", when I flipped one of the tape decks early, during the break after women are smarter, so I made it into drums on that deck, no problem.
posted by mikelieman at 3:20 AM on September 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I used to rewind/fast-forward cassettes by twirling them on a #2 pencil, to save batteries.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 5:20 PM on September 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

The best format for music is the album.
The best format for an album is as a physical object.
The best format for a physical object is a rectangle roughly the dimensions of a deck of playing cards or pack of cigarettes.
posted by rifflesby at 9:00 PM on September 2, 2023

My first They Might Be Giants album was a cassette version of their first album, and I noticed a weird fade-out/fade-in on the first song (during the slow "spacey" part, for those familiar). It faded to total silence for a few minutes then faded back in before the last tempo change.

Didn't find out until years later that the cassette had a defect (didn't notice it on the second side because it was shorter and the music stopped before the tape cut out).
posted by Brachinus at 6:16 AM on September 3, 2023

I still expect skips in the Led Zeppelin and Yes albums my friend taped for me in 1986 from his scratchy LPs. When I hear one of the songs, I know exactly where to expect the skips. I remember hearing those songs in the CD-era and feeling like a big void was filled in, knowing what bars I'd missed—but still I think back to the skips-on-tape fondly each time.
posted by not_on_display at 10:13 AM on September 3, 2023