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I think they're a great format for things like noise, and I like bands that still do a demo tape. Cool, cheap way to get your stuff out there, have something to sell on tour when the pressing plant fucks up, whatever, and can have some cool packaging to go along with it.

I'm back on tapes because of dudes here! I even got a crappy Sony boombox, from my in-laws for my birthday, just for them.

daseb wrote:I think they're a great format for things like noise, and I like bands that still do a demo tape. Cool, cheap way to get your stuff out there, have something to sell on tour when the pressing plant fucks up, whatever, and can have some cool packaging to go along with it.

Do bands usually just dub the tapes themselves or get it done professionally? Presumably it's much cheaper than vinyl.

Cassettes are for perverts.
If you want the physical fetishistic object, vinyl sounds better and looks cooler.
If you want cheap convenience, CDs are the way to go.

I mostly listen to digital files around the house, CDs in the car, and vinyl during breakfast.

penelope tree wrote:

daseb wrote:I think they're a great format for things like noise, and I like bands that still do a demo tape. Cool, cheap way to get your stuff out there, have something to sell on tour when the pressing plant fucks up, whatever, and can have some cool packaging to go along with it.

Do bands usually just dub the tapes themselves or get it done professionally? Presumably it's much cheaper than vinyl.

Depends on time and budget I guess? It's astronomically cheaper than vinyl though, even if you're in a country with like one place that still produces cassette tapes like I am.

Besides cassette dubbing machines crop up pretty often in op shops around here, and get traded around a bit by people, so it's kind of a nice way to do it all yourself. Get cool looking cassettes on ebay, screen or stencil art on them, dub it yourself, make your own covers, it's fun!

Tapes are awesome because they're dirt cheap to release.

I buy tapes on the regular, mostly because it's a cheap and convenient way to check out new music, or if I'm not sure I want to spring for an LP. Some things are only on available on tape, like The New & Very Welcome (Jessica McDermott), who has self-released a bunch of awesome, limited cassettes. I will sometimes order some random ones from Lost Sound Tapes to get my fix of twee/powerpop and such, they always have rad stuff. The only thing that's sort of a crapshoot with tape releases is when people dub them wrong, with too little volume so the sound is all distant and mushy. Then it just sounds like shit, but when done properly those little things sound perfectly good and more comfortable to my ears than a CD, or at least preferable to MP3s.

I was lucky to find a pristine Technics double decker once at a thrift store for like $15, so that's my main player. Also have a 4-track and a few portable ones, like this weird Pipasonic (huh?) thing that I use to record ideas/noise. Sometimes we get primitive and record stuff at our space with two ribbon mics into a walkman.

They're the new 7" in that regard. Cheap way to have a product to sell.

A new generation of listeners have a walkman or cheap cassette recorder & listen via aux cord in the car or with portable speakers like a Beats pill.
Now if only it incentivizes Panasonic and/or Sony to reactivate a modern cassette product line like the vinyl renaissance did for the Technics sl1200...

rustywire, daseb, Strange Tales, D.o.S. all give good reason why I still have tapes. Plus a lot of older (cooler) cars have tape decks in them. I also like, much like vinyl, the amount of effort it takes to change songs...so I am kind of stuck listening when driving and not being scatterbrained while listening (the ultimate digital problem...I hang the ipod in my shop so I have to get a ladder to change songs...it's not that I don't like what comes on...just always randomly thinking about songs). I've never stopped getting cassettes but I have gotten more recently because of ILF and finding demo tapes out there. Vinyl was a big cost for the band and a lot of people view CDs as give away trash (maybe because of churches, AOL, and every damn street fair piano player) so I kind of see cassettes as a balance of all that. Sure the sound might not be the best, but a lot of CD mixing is terrible too.

Get tapes from digdugDIY, irerror, Strange Tales, and ILF people. Good stuff all around.

Years ago I bought a cassette from Chainsaw to the Face...blank...but I've gotten a few blank cds from bands too. Oh, another problem with CDs is that if they go the CDR route, sometimes it isn't compatible (something to do with the specic spec ANSI/ISO stuff that windows uses sometimes...wont work in my truck or on my mac. Have to dig out the old $40 dell, rip it, then send it to my mac and reburn it...annoying. I got a lot of CDs in the UK like this and a few of them where from pressing plants ( i assume they were using some kind of home replicator...I have had DVDs like this too)...so it is something to take into consideration with CDs even though 98% of the time it is all good).

I really dislike that they are easy to lose and tape machines eat them.

I like them. I like buying things at shows and don't like most band shirts. It's such a big part of the hardcore/punk/noise/whatever freaky you want to do community. I like the collectablilty of them. I want to put a tape deck in my car but don't know how...

I like buying tapes but I would admit that there is a contrary, transgressive dimension to it, especially as I only have a Walkman! It's also an economic decision as I want to support the band but don't necessarily want to pay for a vinyl record.

I would quite to get a Tascam Portastudio or something too.

Not a fan. There seems to be a little trend at the minute where bands release a tape, and tape only. They don't even put the tracks on bandcamp or anything, or put a download code with it. It's like it's released to the exclusive club for the ultra-cool who still own a functioning tape deck. No one else can listen to it, except tape deck owners. So that has - quite irrationally - made me dislike all tapes in the current tape revival. Fuck tapes.