Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year

Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by bluedino on Sunday January 06, 2019 @04:39PM (#18840885)

Nostalgia, gifts, hobbyists.

I’m actually impressed with the vinyl niche/trend - Compact discs only sold 70 million (plummeting big time) last year compared to vinyl at almost 10 million.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by criddell on Sunday January 06, 2019 @04:58PM (#18840998)

The vinyl market I understand. The large format artwork, the physicality of the disk and needle, the collecting, and the nostalgia factor are all pretty compelling. The cassette revival I don't get at all. I would guess it's not going anywhere.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by KozmoNau7 on Monday January 07, 2019 @05:59AM (#18844275)

I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and my primary playback format was cassette tape, until I was around 12-13 and got my own CD player. I first listened to classic albums like Deep Purple - Machine Head and various Beatles albums on tape, so there will always be a certain nostalgia factor there. I assume a lot of other people around my age feel the same way.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by criddell on Monday January 07, 2019 @09:16AM (#18845226)

Cassettes might always be around but I think the only reason they saw double digit growth is because the market is so small. However, I can't see somebody choosing cassettes (or for that matter, 8-track cartridges) as the primary format for their music collection in the same way some do with vinyl or CDs.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by KozmoNau7 on Monday January 07, 2019 @11:19AM (#18846440)

Oh no no, absolutely not. I only keep a handful of cassette tapes around for nostalgic reasons, and I don't have a tape deck anymore, because it seems rather pointless, as you say.

I just like to hang on to obsolete media that once meant the world to me, so I have a couple of tapes, some 3.5" floppy disks and a couple of MiniDiscs (still shrinkwrapped), purely for nostalgia and maybe one day as something to show the eventual grandkids.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by tyfon on Sunday January 06, 2019 @05:04PM (#18841039)

Maybe they miss the sound MCs make after a couple of hot summers in the glove compartment :)

Personally I have many vinyls but the only MCs I have (2 boxes full) contain ZX spectrum games. I wonder how many of them still work, I haven't had it out for a spin in a couple years.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by beetwenty on Sunday January 06, 2019 @05:45PM (#18841225)

Cassettes have a versatile DIY aesthetic about them: you could record all your sources off radio, TV or CD, sample it into a synth, build up and trade mixtapes, and so on. It isn't just a format for pre-recorded, and digital doesn't really do the same thing since the result of recording into digital is neatly encoded and organized files.

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Re:Vinyl and Cassette Sales Continued to Grow Last Year by gdulli on Sunday January 06, 2019 @07:28PM (#18841747)

I read once that prisons only use cassettes because optical media can be turned into weapons.

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