Cassette sales in the UK grew by 5.2% in 2022, reaching their highest level since 2003, following 10 consecutive years of growth, Forbes reports. All in all, 195,000 audio cassettes were sold last year in the UK, compared to 3,823 sold in 2012. All 20 of the U.K's biggest-selling cassettes in 2022 were released that year, with the most popular cassettes sold being The Arctic Monkeys' ‘The Car’ and ‘Harry’s House' by Harry Styles. Similarly, in the U.S. 2022 sales of albums on cassette tape jumped by 28% to 440,000 - up from 343,000 in 2021,

The Conversations looks for reasons for cassette's comeback: Independent musicians have been looking to the sale of physical products and merchandise as a means of generating income. Cassettes actually represented a cost-effective means of providing a physical product, far cheaper than pressing a vinyl record and printing sleeves and packaging... Many people have reported feelings of digital detachment and alienation during the pandemic. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that a desire for something we can actually feel, embellished with a nostalgic glow from a COVID-free past, may also explain the resurgence of the audio cassette.

Billboard believes cassettes are gonna have a revival, similar to the vinyl. In 2018, only 219,000 cassette albums were sold, while in 2020, on Discogs alone, cassette album sales were up a third, totaling 282,798. Big French cassette manufacturer RecordingTheMasters in 2019 was manufacturing around 9,000 cassette tapes a month. Now, they are at 30,000 a month. Apart from being cheaper and more practical, cassettes are produced at half the time it takes for vinyl.

Belgium inventor Lou Ottens, who led the project of developing a cassette tape, has died at the age of 94, NPR reports. He was the head of product development at Philips’s electronics factory in Hasselt, Belgium in early 1960s when he told his team to develop an audio device that was smaller, cheaper and easier to use than the reel-to-reel tape recorder because that one was to much of a hassle. As a result, they invented the cassette tape, which went on to be sold in billions. Ottens spearheaded another advance in electronics, working on a Philips team that jointly introduced the compact disc with Sony in 1982.

Retro-futuristic design, sound quality, and package design attract a new generation of music-lovers in Japan to cassette tapes, Vice reports about the interesting trend. Young people in their 20s and 30s are seeking music and culture from the 70s and 80s, paying over 158,700 Japanese yen ($1,517) for packs of 10, or 1,100 yen ($10.50) to 1,980 yen ($19) for a cassette. Maxell is the only remaining cassette tape maker in Japan, selling an annual average of 8 million cassettes nationally,

There was a 103% increase in cassette sales in the UK in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, new figures from the Official Charts company show. 65,000 cassettes were purchased in the first half of 2020 and the figures are on course to top 100,000 for the first time since 2003. The best selling cassettes of 2020 were by 5 Seconds of Summer, Lady Gaga, The 1975, Selena Gomez and Dua Lipa. 5 Seconds of Summer’s ‘CALM’ sold 12,000 in the first week making it the fastest selling cassette in 18 years.

Stella Wedell from Berlin was 12 when she went on a Spanish holiday and had her walkman with a cassette with Pet Shop Boys, Shaggy and Bob Marley on it. She lost the tape, either on the Costa Brava or in Mallorca, only to be reunited with the cassette tape quarter of a century later at an exhibition by the British artist and photographer Mandy Barker, who specialises in creating pieces out of plastic marine debris. According to Guardian, Barker had picked up the tape from the Playa de Barlovento beach in Lanzarote, hundreds of miles away from where it was lost, had it restored – and made playable. Apart from the almost-romantic side of the story, there is the ecological side, as prof Richard Thompson, the head of the international marine litter research unit at Plymouth University, said - "the fact it has survived intact shows the durability of plastic and the threat it can pose to the marine environment”.

154 million albums were either streamed, bought or downloaded the UK last year, the largest amount since 2006, when the figure stood at 161.4 million. The majority of sales (three quarters) were made through streaming - fans streamed 114 billion songs last year, a new record (1,000 streams generate one "sale"). Just three years ago, […]

Production at National Audio Company, America’s largest cassette tape manufacturer, has slowed due to the worldwide shortage of gamma ferric oxide, material essential for the production of cassette tapes, Pitchfork reports. The only factory that refines the magnetic material used in the production of professional audio recording tape has been under renovation for most of […]

Cassette sales continued to rise in the UK in the first half of 2019 - 35,000 cassette sales were recorded between January and June, which is almost double the numbers sold in the same six-month period last year. However, cassette sales account for only 0.2% of album sales, against the 12% recorded with vinyl. The […]