Anyone know what the Support For Equal Pay, Fair Play For Tapes, Same Music Same Price, Support The Cuts was about. It's an old photo from a music shop in the UK I believe. Posters/sig s above some tape stands have these sayings.
From the pink writing I would guess the shop is HMV which surprisingly is still going. I think all the posters are simply a promotion pointing out that the cassettes are the same price as vinyl, which wasn't always the case, although by the end of the 80s I often bought cassettes because they were cheaper than vinyl, especially in shops that were shifting to CD. The slogans appear to be inspired by Left wing political sayings at the time so I would guess this was during the time of Thatcherism, although that covers the whole of the 1980s. More searching suggests early 1980s with the cuts being to universities. Students would have been a significant part of HMV's customer base. https://specialcollectionsuniversit...om/2019/08/30/highfield-campus-100-1980-2000/ £2.49 seems quite cheap for a tape, although that does appear to be for old ones that have dropped out of the charts. My guess is that this is from before CDs really started to take off say 1982. Does anyone recognise any of the albums ? That would narrow down one end of the dates. Finally some music that was in the charts back then which captured the mood of young people The irony was that it could have been written for 2020 and the pandemic.
From Wikipedia "Ghost Town" is a song by the British two-tone band the Specials, released on 12 June 1981. The song spent three weeks at number one and 10 weeks in total in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. Evoking themes of urban decay, deindustrialisation, unemployment and violence in inner cities, the song is remembered for being a hit at the same time as riots were occurring in British cities. Internal tensions within the band were also coming to a head when the single was being recorded, resulting in the song being the last single recorded by the original seven members of the group before splitting up. However, the song was hailed by the contemporary UK music press as a major piece of popular social commentary, and all three of the major UK music magazines of the time awarded "Ghost Town" the accolade of "Single of the Year" for 1981. It was the 12th-best-selling single in the UK in 1981.''
I can pick out I think on the right hand side on the top row Tarkus by ELP on the next row Ry. Cooder on the first left with Bob Dylan next to it and on the third row down an Iggy Pop Cassette . However as these are all headed Back Tracks, it does not help to identify the date of the picture but I would guess 1981 just before CDs came in 1982.
I think it’s expensive for what it is, at £2.49p I would say it’s a cassette single. Considering you can get a cassette album for £9.99p, £2.49p for a single is pricy. I only own 1 cassette single which is Adventures of Stevie V – Dirty Cash. Also I would say the date is not early 80's but later, as they never had cassette singles back then.
I am still not so sure that they are cassette singles as the sign above says “ Over 500 albums and tapes all at just £2.49 each “ so it would be a nobrainer if they were cassette singles when you could have an album for £2.49.
When I zoomed in I could see those. Like you I think they are albums but the "Back Tacks" heading implies that that section is all oldies. I wouldn't expect to find anything that had been in the charts that year (whichever it was). I have commented before how in the 1970s the local supermarket used to sell MFP albums for about £1 some of which were by "has been" groups like The Beatles. I actually bought this one https://www.discogs.com/release/1380969-The-Beatles-A-Collection-Of-Beatles-Oldies I just checked and there was a matching cassette https://www.discogs.com/release/3568100-The-Beatles-A-Collection-Of-Beatles-Oldies Before anyone had even thought of dial up internet record companies were making money from their back catalogues, in a similar way to they do today.
Okay I could be wrong. I never saw cassette albums that cheap in the 80's or 90's, I must have been going to the wrong places.
I have been looking at the huge selection of 1980s HMV adverts online. I guess the £2.49 albums were a similar selection to this Bands that had either gone out of fashion, or albums released by bands before they became fashionable. At the time there was no way you would get an album like The Human League - Dare for £2.99. The average price for successful chart albums seemed to be £4.29 The same price for vinyl or cassette, which is what the original post was about. p.s. There are loads of pictures of the inside of the shops. This is where the cassettes display came from https://www.vintag.es/2016/03/37-photos-show-how-hmv-stores-looked.html I like the emphasis on the Top 10 in one of the later ones. Bands would often launch their new Album at a large HMV or Virgin records, signing albums and hoping to push it into the charts. https://artsandculture.google.com/a...s-for-fans-in-hmv-record-store/qQE5-tPBABAFTg https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/18817908.iron-maiden-bucks-fizz-came-hmv/
The whole vintag.es site is worth having a look although other than a group by decade function it doesn't have an obvious structure. In the 1980s section I found pictures of the students strike of 1985 (who was going lose out from that?) and pictures of Freddie Mercury playing tennis.
As others have commented: - The "Fair play for tapes", "Same music same price" promotion was full-price cassettes & vinyl being the same (in the UK at least, cassettes were often priced a bit higher than vinyl, perhaps because there were a fair few albums that had extra tracks on the cassette version). - The "Back tracks" promo was a selection of ex-chart albums at a reduced price. All the music retailers did it, & I got some decent bargains back then...
I have a couple of BackTracks type cassettes with two albums on one cassette. Susan Vegas first two albums, and two from Christopher Cross. I don't recall what they cost and anyway I think they were bought in a garage, back when most cars had a factory fitted radio cassette. p,s I also just remembered my Altered Images - Collected Images pre recoded cassette. Side 1 is all their hits. Side 2 all the remixes. The tape must be about 90 minutes long.
