![]() ![]() She said she was struck at the interest level both at her store and the original Rough Trade shops in London. That's why hardcore cassettes used to sell so well - it's about that fuzzy, grungy thing," she said.įor cassette day, Silverman co-curated a two-tape set of emerging US and British acts who have a do-it-yourself feel. "If it's some big, pristine studio recording, it's not well served being on a cassette. You can sit and let Spotify or Soundcloud or Facebook tell you what to listen to, or you can work to find new music."Įven when stores in industrialized countries stopped stocking cassettes, the format remained vibrant in sub-Saharan Africa, meaning that afropop fans are often obliged to look for tapes.Īmong genres, hip-hop and hardcore punk lend themselves well to cassettes, said Hope Silverman, manager of Rough Trade's New York store. "These are the people who let music come to them. "A lot of people say that they don't have cassette players anymore, but most of them haven't even tried looking," Bohrman said. On cassettes, listeners are more likely to take in the whole album. "You're much more likely to take a chance on music if it's just costing you $5 a tape," he said.Īnd while it is more unwieldy to select tracks on cassettes compared with CDs, MP3s or even vinyl, Bohrman said that is exactly the point. ![]() With the lower overhead, Burger Records has specialized in signing obscure garage acts for cassette releases. Last year, cassettes accounted for fewer than 0.1 percent of the 289 million albums sold in the United States, with CDs still topping digital downloads, according to Nielsen figures.īut Bohrman saw a distinct advantage - it costs his label a little over one dollar to produce each tape, while a vinyl run could cost thousands of dollars and take months. In an effort reminiscent of events to promote vinyl, dozens of record stores around the world on Saturday held a special cassette day to sell tapes ranging from the new album by rising indie band Foxygen to reissued classics by ironic rockers They Might Be Giants.įew expect that cassettes - notorious for getting jammed and unspooled - will again become the dominant format as in the 1980s before compact discs took over. In an age where vast volumes of music can be downloaded instantly for free, vinyl has witnessed a rebirth among collectors, with LP sales soaring by one-third in the United States in 2013 alone. "No one, least of all us, expected this to happen," said Bohrman. Seven years later, Bohrman helps run a label out of southern California, Burger Records, which has sold 350,000 cassettes - tiny in the universe of the music industry, but marking an unlikely mini-revival of an often-derided format whose obituary had been written in the 1990s. He could listen to his own, and others', albums on the cheap. (NEW YORK-AFP) - Hitting the road with his band in a beat-up van, Sean Bohrman looked at the cassette deck and, instead of seeing an ancient relic, became inspired. ![]()
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