The Return of the Cassette Tape? How Analog Music Is Making a Comeback

Vinyl records have been enjoying an extended renaissance in recent years. Record-store owners say they’re selling as much as they did more than 40 years ago, with 41 million records accounting for more than a $1 billion in sales in 2022 alone.

But it’s not just vinyl that’s become popular again. The humble cassette tape is having a renaissance of its own.

The Return of the Cassette Tape

Sales of cassettes are up more than 440 percent over the past decade. Cassette players (think modernized Walkmans) are also back, with companies producing new versions of this decidedly retro tech. Arguably, cassette-tape collecting is a little more casual than its vinyl counterpart, as most cassette collectors don’t have the same afficionado aspirations as those who hunt down rare vinyl. Nostalgia for the 1980s might be fueling some of this mini-boom, with TV shows like Stranger Things introducing younger generations to artists such as Kate Bush and her 1985 classic, “Running Up That Hill.” For certain fans willing to pay, it’s just cooler to play it on a cassette tape.

Scene from Netflix’s Stranger Things featuring Kate Bush’s song, “Running Up That Hill” (Uploaded to YouTube by Still Watching Netflix)

Along with the nostalgia and aesthetic factors, cassette fans appreciate their portability and their surprising durability. The culture of the mixtape and the boombox has an enduring appeal, it seems.

A Brief History of the Cassette

The original heyday of the cassette tape was the 1970s, when it was the dominant format for music, before being supplanted by CDs by the early 1990s. But when it first appeared on the market in the 1960s, the “compact cassette” was a relatively radical, and more personal way of listening to music, far more mobile than reel-to-reel tape, but operating in much the same way. Lou Ottens, a Dutch audio engineer who worked for Philips, is rightly credited as its inventor, but the basic principle beyond the format (recording sounds on magnetic tape), dates back to the 1920s and was improved upon before and then during World War II by American innovators such as Beverley R. Gooch.

After the war, magnetic tape dramatically changed the music industry, allowing for more perfected tracks and detailed post editing. Artists could record, fine tune, and then re-record, in ways previously not feasible. Without it, arguably, the music of the latter half of the 20th century would not have been possible — even today it is hard to conceive of how much of an impact this technology had on the development of the music that we know and love today.

In the late 1940s through the early 1960s, reel-to-reel tape players were considered the ultimate afficionado’s way of playing music at home. Reel-to-reel tape was also used for voice notes and business recording. They became fairly compact and often utilized more advanced vacuum-tube and later on transistor (the predecessor to the microchip) technology.

While these devices are just on the outside edge of most people’s living memory, they do make a memorable cameo in Back to the Future III, when “Doc” Brown is seen using a reel-to-reel to make notes to himself in 1955. The challenge, both then and now, with working with the devices is the number of moving parts, especially those that become worn out. But even today, to some particularly niche collectors, they still have appeal, perhaps due to their very complexity.

Doc Brown using a reel-to-reel in Back to the Future III (Uploaded to YouTube by Universal Pictures All Access)

The Cassette Gets Popular

 The cassette tape first arrived on the commercial market in the 1960s, as pioneered by Philips. While it was originally intended primarily for dictation, its appeal was soon more immediate. Cassettes were far more portable than records, especially once they could be enjoyed via players in cars and then, in 1979, with the popular Sony Walkman. Designed for Masaru Ibuka, the co-founder of Sony, the Walkman was born out of a desire by Ibuka to listen to opera music (of all things) on airline flights. For the rest of us, the combination of the Walkman (and its many imitators) and the cassette meant that you could truly take your music with you.

The other key device that secured the popularity of the cassette for music lovers was the boombox of the late 1970s and then the 1980s. These were made by a variety of companies, but they all had a loud speaker — hence the “boom” — and a cassette player (or two) built in, along with a radio. They were tied inextricably to early hip-hop culture in cultural centers such as New York City. With a boombox and a collection of cassettes, you could have an impromptu musical hangout, well, pretty much anywhere.

The cassettes had other advantages over records. They could hold more songs and were far less fragile than records. Best of all, you could record on them. The ability to make mixtapes for your friends and crushes is part of the cassette’s lingering appeal to music fans. Sharing your favorite songs and artists in a personalized way revolutionized fan culture and created iconic scenes in movies: Think the boombox serenade in Say Anything or the “Bohemian Rhapsody” scene in Wayne’s World. Jazz, rap, and rock could be combined on one tape, suiting even the most eclectic tastes. This capacity for curation means that the cassette, for many, has a powerful, nostalgic appeal.

The iconic boombox serenade scene in Say Anything, 1989 (Uploaded to YouTube by Movieclips)

Other “Comeback” Technologies

Vinyl and cassettes are not the only analog, legacy sound technologies that are “back.” Headphones, seemingly banished from their wires and consigned to the ether of our fickle Bluetooth connections, are again more appealing if they’re physically tied to our heads. This seems especially true among younger, Gen Z users, but also among older music fans who don’t like fiddling with their WiFi settings. Wired headphones are likely safer to use, and less likely to be hacked, though not all “wired” headphones are actually wired.

What’s next with this retro affection? Maybe landline phones? Why yes, actually, those are cool again too. Perhaps it’s an attempt to escape screen fatigue, or maybe all of us — young and old — are overstimulated from our notifications and connectedness. Similarly, film cameras emphasize slowing down, taking in the moment and making each and every shot count. Flip phones may help with mental health, with their fewer distractions. And devices that let writers use word processors without accessing the internet follow the same principle: slower is sometimes better.

What Analog Affection May Actually Mean

This “revenge of analog,” to borrow from the title of an insightful, and prescient, 2016 book by author David Sax, is motivated by a combination of factors, from the practical to the more prosaic, and, ultimately, a more mindful use of technology. This approach rejects a binary of good vs. bad tech, and instead seeks a via media — a middle path — with its daily use.

Anecdotally, among my students, I see a desire to balance the abilities of tech with a hope for more and better human connections. A number of them are either logging off social media entirely, or locking their accounts down and limiting them to a few friends and family. Or if they’re online and engaged, they like to take breaks or use some of the above analog technology alternatives to slow things down.

I think we can learn from them — and from media history — by taking the more reflective route to using technology. If that means cassettes tapes and wired headphones, I’m all for it.