CASSETTE: Analog cassettes: The hiss shall rise again

From our archives

Steve Guttenberg

The lowly analog cassette is making a comeback. In 2012, sales were up 13 percent, and the surge continued in 2013!

Sony has been in the news of late for its radical new tech that crams 185TB of data onto a single analog-style cassette tape. That's a very different story -- I'm referring to old-school, all-analog music cassettes that indie labels and DIY artists are cranking out now.

When I chatted with a clerk at Other Music in Greenwich Village, he told me genres are mostly limited to new garage rock, noise, and experimental electronic fringe stuff, but the store has sold cassettes for quite a few years. The difference is there's a lot more cassettes coming out over the past year or so. He admitted collectibility among college-age customers might be part of cassette's appeal, but older folks are also looking for tapes.

Analog cassette players are hands-on machines; most don't have ..........

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