I'll admit that the title of this thread is a bit clickbaity, but bear with me. In the last year or so alone we've seen some pretty big names and sources go back to endorsing the cassette tape as a legitimate way to enjoy music in the 21st century. There's been everything from the mention of enjoyment that comes from owning a "walkman" or cassette deck, to the lack of ads and right up to the whole point of actually "owning" the music you listen to. Even the seriousness of how it can be a better way to make money as a musician than streaming, has been mentioned. Probably all of us know of Techmoan. He's a pretty famous Youtuber that was probably responsible (along with Walkman Archive) for driving up walkman sales and prices massively in the last couple of years. Techmoan has done quite a few different cassette player reviews and generally makes really good content anyway. He has connections in the music and audio industry too and definitely above average knowledge about analogue devices. 8 years ago he made this, as a much less known Youtuber: 2 years later he made this, which I will admit is around the time I also bought a Sony WM-D6C myself (but I was quite unimpressed even though it had been professionally serviced): Note: Furthering on he generally made one video about cassette players that got quite popular every year. At least after the second video here, I saw for myself the sudden uptick in walkmans and cassette players of all kinds making their way to eBay and local classifieds. I also saw the prices practically double in a matter of months. If we check Google Trends, we can also see that during this time there was a huge spike in "walkman" searches even just in the UK (Techmoan is British). Note that Google Trends does not show how many "searches" that were performed but gives a vague value of "interest". So if the term "walkman" was at a constant value of about 15-20, the sudden jumps to 75 and 100 are massive increases. Surprisingly we can also see that the top countries which are searching for "walkman" at least, are Chile, Japan (no surprises), Bolivia, El Salvador and Hungary. Well that's 4 surprises for me, not sure about you! To be transparent though as we should, most of the associated hits though come from terms like: "Sony Ericsson live walkman" and "Sony Xperia Walkman", so not "cassette walkman". For just that term, we get a very steady decrease in interest. However! If we search for specifically "cassette walkman" we get a very steady increase in interest over time from as far back as 2010 with pretty massive increases any time these Youtuber videos are made. Japan at least delt with a serious resurgence: and this video could explain why they got so popular in SE Asia: Colin from "This Does Not Compute" also picked up the topic quite seriously 4 years ago here: He gave a pretty realistic albeit not wholly professional (yes I am being critical) rundown about the actual pros and cons of buying, owning, repairing a walkman and finally listening to cassette tapes. It's a fantastic video and despite missing some crucial information it really well represents the exact experience 90% of people will have when they buy one of these devices and try to use it to play music. (Colin if you read this thanks!) Apple and Samsung propagandist MKBHD did a Walkman history video where he confirmed the sports walkman he was using was actually very good: Adam Marytn did an awesome but relatively unknown video on the practicality and experience of owning a walkman and using tapes: Audio Masterclass who previously roasted the cassette comeback years ago (and in return got roasted himself), wholly changed his tune last year: Now let's FFWD to nearer to the present. Dozens upon dozens of people are jumping on cassettes now. You can see this everywhere. "Design of Things" did a beautiful review of the iconic design of the Sony WM-30: CBS News America just did a video 1 month ago claiming that cassettes are making a big comeback, stating a 400% increase in sales in physical media in general: Mary Spender (no idea who she is, but I am guessing a guitarist that does song covers) did an amazing video on cassettes, putting extra emphasis on how as a musician you could make a lot more money starting off with them, than streaming: EDIT: Ok I seem to have been logged out whilst writing this and after logging in when trying to post. More than 50% of my whole post is gone... That's very frustrating. I will just summarise everything instead then because I don't have time to do everything from scratch again. After this spot I lost everything. From this point on I mostly mentioned "new" cassette players that have been released following this trend. Such as: We Are Rewind, Dirt Tape's player and Fiio's CP13. Most of which have been actually reviewed quite unprofessionally, excepting Techmoan who fairly roasted We Are Rewind; but the jury is sort of out on Fiio's player. In short, the general consensus is that anyone interested in tapes should just go find a half decent older Sony and I would be one to agree. ANA[DIA]LOG did a few pretty bad reviews of each of these players. Here's one video of his. I would have liked a much better commitment to properly trying to get the speed and W&F stats on the devices he reviews and less rambling: I also added some history from Japan, plus a few other videos on current tape production to finish off with a question to others about what they think of this trend. A lot of my original post is missing though. So I am still summarising here. Some companies have tried making tapes in the last few years. Fiio made some for a while and you can find them at some stores online. Dirt Tapes is making Type 1 tapes only it seems, but they glow in the dark along with the case and that's quite cool. However, most notably Maxell is still making tons of very high quality cassette tapes and is in fact one of the last companies still doing this: My last paragraphs were mostly about how more people seem to be turning to cassettes. Not just for playback and listening but actually for producing their music. They are cheap, easy to record on and generally for most musician's needs, they are perfect. As Mary says above, there is a lot more money potentially to be made. Now you get absolutely next to nothing unless you're regularly making 60,000+ streams. Whereas selling a cassette tape (or CD) can make you some quick instant money as a musician. I'd like to just take a moment to appreciate how far ahead Sony and all of Japan were and in many ways truly still are when it comes to music, attention to detail and sheer practicality in general. Even in other news, Japan showing again how far ahead of the world they are (I am not being sarcastic) in not only keeping cash but issuing new banknotes whilst the rest of the world goes totally nuts over forced digital currency and ID. Back on topic. In my opinion tapes (and by association walkmans and decks) will only get more popular. However, one extremely important thing to take into account is the availability of good tapes. Whilst there's a finite limit (albeit quite large) on quality Walkmans. Production of "good" tapes needs to also increase somewhat. When it comes to tapes, not everyone is simply interested in buying existing and used tapes. A common trend among all people coming to tapes, especially Gen Z is the ability to make your own mixtapes. Finding good enough quality tapes to do this though isn't usually easy and for really good quality tapes they can be quite expensive and in very short supply. I hope we'll see other brands start production on good quality, type 2 tapes sometime soon. I'll leave this thread here. I had written a lot more and maybe I'll come back and fill it in but I keep forgetting that this site has a very aggressive inactivity timer for logging you out. Thanks.
What are your thoughts on the elbow cassette player? I would like to see that come to reality someday.
Gordie Howe's Bar in Traverse City was called the "Elbow Room." Old member Arkay used to write very long essays, he'd walk out for a sandwich and come back logged out and with the same issues, it's much better but I don't know why it doesn't save the full draft when it logs you out. A lot of us older members remember the gravy days of the early 2000's, anything tape related was pretty much free or thrown out. There were the exceptions like high end Naks, DD Walkmans and even RC-M90's were going for around $600 back then. I was collecting a ton of stuff that I thought was basically worthless or not much more than $15 USD. I did buy a Nakamichi Tri-Tracer for fifty dollars just cuz I wanted a big clunky vertical player with wood, but that was a rare exception, I think that was 2005? I started seeing some pricing movement up, shortly after that, and the complaining started about not finding as many bargains. 2008-2012 was a short blip, some big bargains were around but after 2012 pricing was back to normal and still going up. I think component tape decks started getting some wind after 2010, more talk about them on the other forums and the reletive music bargain to have a cheap Goodwill (thrift store) Tape Deck and a handful of cool cassettes. 2014 is when the articles started getting published regularly and YouTube followed. We've been watching it for 20 years, from boat anchors to necessary accessories. Personally I think this forum (and Pocket Calculator Show) had more to do with it initially than anywhere else, in the previous versions of the forum going back to 2002 there would be all-night discussions of equipment and the rest of us lusted after the cool stuff we had never seen before. Some members even had full catalogs that really showed a ton of stuff that was never sold world-wide. Most Walkman or boombox google searches lead to The Pocket Calculator Show https://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/ back then and the forum had, and still does, a world-wide membership. If this equipment didn't play music with decent sonics I doubt there would be any revival, now we're seeing younger people having fun discovering a cheap tape and wanting equipment to play it. Tapes and albums are for sale at most concert merch booths and have been for at least 10 years. Bands want to sell tangible albums so the price of a Portastudio has gone through the roof. I have fun with my stuff and just like looking at it while doing boring desk work. I still get and play tapes, my work trucks all have working tape decks but I'm amazed at how even prerecorded tapes are going way up in value.
Honestly I think it would be incredible. Provided the head was actually good and it had some (any) kind of noise cancelling, and the battery life was decent. Those are really only the 3 obstacles I think any cassette player has to climb before they are worth at least some amount of money. I'd suspect this thing to not cost more than about $120. Otherwise one would touch it. You'd be really pushing it to try and sell it for max $150. Noise reduction is the first thing I think any company who even wants to touch cassettes, should deal with. Any form of even basic noise reduction (think just halving the noise of a standard Dolby-B implementation) would be a very welcome benefit. These days if the device is Bluetooth supported or has any kind of "chip" in it, the noise reduction could even be digital. Although then you aren't getting a "true" analogue experience? So it depends on what you want. At least if I was designing it, I'd have a "pure" output option and then one with digital noise cancelling of some kind. It's extremely simple to implement basic noise-cancelling today. As for W&F I guess that would depend on a few factors. Shaking and moving the cassette even if the device was fixed quite strongly to the tape, would still cause the tape to wobble partially. If the device aims to work in someone's pocket, it would need to do something I believe, to stabilize the tape. I would go about this in one or two of different ways. Extending the top section with 2 capstans to drive the tape in a more stable manner. Battery life would need to be I think at least 8 hours. Though I assume the more likely limit with the device as small as what is pictured is probably closer to 6 hours. In any case, a quick search reveals their Facebook page and they have killed the project as far back as 2019: https://www.facebook.com/ElbowCP/ Likely it didn't financially last through the whole COVID lockdown longevity. What a shame. Unless the entire idea is patented I think it would be a fantastic idea. In any case, looks like it was proposed in 2016, seriously considered and theorized in 2017 and lasted about 2 more years before the project was dropped. On top of that, it seemed their last attempt was to get money from some design fund and they didn't win so they shelved the project and nothing has been heard of since. In any case my father ran an analogue recording studio in his younger years. It wasn't even a few years later after he got into it and had put down a small fortune on gear, that everything went digital and people were learning how to rip a CD into .mp3. My father either had the choice of replacing everything with digital or sticking with his analogue equipment. Ultimately I think his loyalty to his TASCAM setup won in the end and he kept it all. Years later selling everything to another musician who wanted to produce his own label via analogue means. If you want to hear one of the tracks they produced here it is. For those who stumble on this thread much later and don't have much attention span or patience, it starts off slow until about 0:30: oh and my father provided the harmonica to this track: Before meeting my dad, Nonda was part of "Shift the Teli": https://tomkazas.bandcamp.com/album/shift-the-teli-1996 and his wife Eleni even provided some of the lyrics. They were an interesting bunch, my dad a die-hard blues enjoyer and Nonda who was actively chopping up equipment to make his own electronic sounds. I don't think a single musician who worked on this album is alive anymore. May they rest in peace <3 Seems this album at least is also on Spotify, but I don't have that: https://open.spotify.com/track/1q5w7wOSKZJSXCEoDpNHRL just some .flac files I've had for the last 11 years of the albums.
A nice contribution post so thanks to givemeyourwalkmans A couple of videos there were worth watching so thanks (not techmoan as that guy just tends to annoy me nowadays).
I'm just hear to look at the photos.... Wow, 5000 boomboxes? that must be a record. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/El...st-Cassette-player-prices-surge-amid-comeback
I would certainly say that they're making a comeback. You covered most of the reasons that tend to get thrown around on YouTube and in the news, but I think something they're all missing is vaporwave. Vaporwave got pretty big online in the 2010s and it (along with some of it's subgenres) was designed to make anyone who grew up in the late 1980s - early 2000s feel nostalgic, or to even make others feel nostalgic for a time they never experienced. I personally wasn't too big into vaporwave, but it's actually because of vaporwave that I got into some of my favorite artists and that eventually led me to get into cassettes. I'm not sure if I count as a zoomer (I guess I'm a zillenial), but I'm like this. I have some used tapes and I have some newer tapes as well but I mostly just record mix tapes. Personally I have absolutely no problems with finding suitable tapes - I genuinely think that Maxell's are good enough and I really don't need anything else, and I think most people my age who are into this probably agree. But rather, I think what most of us are having trouble with is finding a device to record tapes with. Not everyone is capable or repairing this stuff and a lot of these old devices need much more than just a new belt, so the only options are to either to get something that someone else repaired (which is usually very expensive) or to buy a new device, but a lot of the new devices can't make good recordings. I personally have an Onkyo cassette deck that can make good tapes, but I see others using everything from cassette corders meant for dictation to boomboxes that only have a mic input. As far as new devices go, I think things are improving. I have the Fiio CP13 and I genuinely think that it sounds fine after adjusting it. It's not perfect and it's not enough to make me want to part ways with my vintage players, but it is good enough that I would genuinely recommend it to others who are new to cassettes and I think that it is a huge step in the right direction compared to the other new players that are available. It seems that Fiio is planning to release newer models in the future, so hopefully those models will address the problems that exist with the CP13.
Huh. I composed a reply about how to avoid losing posts-in-composition and about digitizing cassettes, and tried to recover from what looked like a stalled photo upload, and lost the whole thing.
Yeah that's happened to me a few times. Sometimes my phone would save it as a draft and sometimes not. So I try to just make all my postings at a single time and ensure that the Wi-Fi is fiber. I don't do anything out in the wild cuz just don't know what the cell phone data might do to your data when uploading
My suggestion, which I frequently regret not using, is to compose long posts in a text file. Again and again I have run into problems with photo uploads stalling on this site. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Perhaps trying to upload something twice.
Using a walkman and Audacity on a computer to turn about 50 commercial and self-recorded cassettes into mp3's. The quality can't be any worse than the running tape. The phone's only disadvantage over the HS-J09 is the lack of an AM band. Other than that, it can hold a vast number of tracks, offers more control over track selection and sound payback, lasts far longer on a charge, protects the precious player from damage and reduces the number of gizmos to carry. Unfortunately this forum's upload facility is again stalled on a photo. (15 minutes) So I'll copy this post and try to stop the upload. ... Maybe a screen capture of the photo that won't upload. Ok, that worked.
Hard to explain but you might try to defrag or clean your phone if that's what you're using. I do mine daily. Clean it out. That is to clean out the cash cache and other things to make sure my cell phone is working at it. Bestability each and every time I go to use it specifically to upload to anywhere and that includes blowing away, unnecessary cookies and all kinds of things I can think of solely for my cell phone. I also use the home Wi-Fi which is fiber and very high speed. I don't know the speed, I just know it's very darn fast. Lastly, check out my postings in boombox! Tech in this site because I have no issues posting pictures in there that is I can help you with.
Good tips. I defrag my PC but never thought of doing it with my phone. If I mass delete my cookies, all sorts of things have to be set up again. It could just be this site's upload function choked on the file size. I don't have this problem with posting photos elsewhere.
Well you have to know what your good cookies are and what your bad cookies are. I know the difference. That way you can delete the bad ones and keep the good ones like the ones for stereo2go for instance. I keep about 30 cookies in my phone. The rest I know are bad as I check them on a regular basis like several times a day and then I delete them Deleting your cookies. You'll know if it's just the name of the website you go to, that's what the cookie should be named. Anything else you can easily delete because it won't be understandable as to what it is or you can simply copy the text of the cookie and Google it and see just what it's all about. That way you'll learn what is good and what is bad and what's the delete and what to keep
I work in IT. Generally cookies are only good for remembering your logins. You can and should delete all cookies whenever your browser exits. If you are using a password manager like ProtonPass, Bitwarden or something else. The hassle of having to login again is removed completely. You can just have a 1-click login with these applications. Cookies are these days mostly used for bad things like tracking you across multiple websites. Some "super cookies" basically never ever expire. The best setting is just to have your browser remove all cookies and use a reputable browser like Firefox or Brave. Unless you live in the third world, it's also a great idea to delete your cache regularly or upon browser exit too. This generally also speeds things up a lot and can resolve a lot of weirdness. As for that, this site does sometimes mess up. Sometimes pages don't load, other times they load but only barely. We also have the archive which loads without any kind of style, that looks odd on any browser. That said, it's just the common quirk with hosting this site on old technology. It keeps costs down.
