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>Philips invented the cassette tape in 1962, first introducing it to music fans a year later. Thanks to its compactness, portability and sound quality, it quick

by cr1895 9y ago

>Philips invented the cassette tape in 1962, first introducing it to music fans a year later. Thanks to its compactness, portability and sound quality, it quickly began to surpass the vinyl record in popularity. This seems suspect... According to this figure (going back to 1973 only) vinyl still far outpaced cassette sales until the mid-80s. http://blog.thecurrent.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/9/files/2014/02/units-vs-dollars-riaa.jpg http://blog.thecurrent.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/9/files/2014...

nolok 9y ago
Man, these two charts side by side really show the total financial abuse/great move (depending on POV) that was the music CD and selling an entire album at once to people who only wanted a few songs. It was not the norm before nor after, just an outlier, but one that brought billions of dollars in. No wonder they fought so hard against downloading (both legal and illegal).
- torrent-of-ions 9y ago
  But they did sell CD singles. People just chose to buy the whole album. I suspect this is because a CD single was the exact same format as the album version and seemed a bit of a waste while 45rpm singles and LPs were physically distinct.
- cr1895 9y ago
  This is also interesting: https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-streaming-is-changing-music-again https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-streaming-is-changing-music-agai... Curiously, during cassette tape dominance in the early 90s album length was 12.5 tracks. This increased to 15.8 in 2003, as CDs dominated. It has declined again to 14.2 tracks. They state, "With subscription pricing and the ability to easily skip among artists (as opposed to per-album or per-song charges, which were the norm), streaming pushes users to listen to explore new artists. This has the potential to reduce the concentration of the very top artists and albums, while also helping music lovers find what economists refer to as the “long tail” of the industry." // totally unrelated complaint: searching Google for the above chart was super frustrating, giving almost exclusively "what sounds best" results when I was trying to find sales figures. Searching for the HBR article I linked above (which I had read previously but forgotten details of) was equally fruitless on Google "average album length" and variations kept returning "what's the best length for an album" results. Had to switch to DDG to find the HBR article, and with the same search term it was the third result. WTF google?! I keep noticing less helpful results.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jasode 9y ago
I don't know what criteria WaPo used but I think if you include blank cassettes instead of just counting prerecorded releases, the tape media was much more popular than vinyl even before mid 1980s. Kids were taping songs from the radio and sharing "mix tapes" in the 1970s. Boom boxes had dual-well cassette decks for easy tape-to-tape dubbing. Cars quickly migrated from 8-track to cassette tapes. (Obviously, a fragile needle & groove playback mechanism isn't going to work a well in a moving vehicle: https://www.google.com/search?q=vinyl+record+player+in+car&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=vinyl+record+player+in+car&s...)
- cr1895 9y ago
  That is very true, but from the article I think they're referring to music that people bought, not tape as a storage medium. Having a tape recorder at home is one thing...having your own record lathe for DIY acetates is quite another. The article says, "Thanks to its compactness, portability and sound quality, it quickly began to surpass the vinyl record in popularity." People aren't making vinyl records at home, so to compare them to tapes-as-a-medium is somewhat apples to oranges. At least that's how I interpret their wording.

by cr1895 9y ago

nolok 9y ago

Man, these two charts side by side really show the total financial abuse/great move (depending on POV) that was the music CD and selling an entire album at once to people who only wanted a few songs. It was not the norm before nor after, just an outlier, but one that brought billions of dollars in. No wonder they fought so hard against downloading (both legal and illegal).

torrent-of-ions 9y ago
But they did sell CD singles. People just chose to buy the whole album. I suspect this is because a CD single was the exact same format as the album version and seemed a bit of a waste while 45rpm singles and LPs were physically distinct.
cr1895 9y ago
This is also interesting: https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-streaming-is-changing-music-again https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-streaming-is-changing-music-agai... Curiously, during cassette tape dominance in the early 90s album length was 12.5 tracks. This increased to 15.8 in 2003, as CDs dominated. It has declined again to 14.2 tracks. They state, "With subscription pricing and the ability to easily skip among artists (as opposed to per-album or per-song charges, which were the norm), streaming pushes users to listen to explore new artists. This has the potential to reduce the concentration of the very top artists and albums, while also helping music lovers find what economists refer to as the “long tail” of the industry." // totally unrelated complaint: searching Google for the above chart was super frustrating, giving almost exclusively "what sounds best" results when I was trying to find sales figures. Searching for the HBR article I linked above (which I had read previously but forgotten details of) was equally fruitless on Google "average album length" and variations kept returning "what's the best length for an album" results. Had to switch to DDG to find the HBR article, and with the same search term it was the third result. WTF google?! I keep noticing less helpful results.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jasode 9y ago

I don't know what criteria WaPo used but I think if you include blank cassettes instead of just counting prerecorded releases, the tape media was much more popular than vinyl even before mid 1980s. Kids were taping songs from the radio and sharing "mix tapes" in the 1970s. Boom boxes had dual-well cassette decks for easy tape-to-tape dubbing. Cars quickly migrated from 8-track to cassette tapes. (Obviously, a fragile needle & groove playback mechanism isn't going to work a well in a moving vehicle: https://www.google.com/search?q=vinyl+record+player+in+car&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=vinyl+record+player+in+car&s...)

cr1895 9y ago
That is very true, but from the article I think they're referring to music that people bought, not tape as a storage medium. Having a tape recorder at home is one thing...having your own record lathe for DIY acetates is quite another. The article says, "Thanks to its compactness, portability and sound quality, it quickly began to surpass the vinyl record in popularity." People aren't making vinyl records at home, so to compare them to tapes-as-a-medium is somewhat apples to oranges. At least that's how I interpret their wording.