But the companies behind the format kept on tweaking and improving it, and once chromium dioxide tape and Dolby sound reduction were introduced, the music cassette became a viable format to rack alongside LPs and 8-track cartridges in record shops.
The real catalyst to global domination, however, was the invention in the late 1970s of the Sony Walkman. This portable device, not much bigger than a cassette itself, allowed people to listen to music on the move. As a result, during the 1980s, the cassette overtook vinyl to become the most popular music format.
The other major reason for its success was the fact that you could record pretty much anything you wanted onto a blank cassette. Whether it be a mixtape for your girlfriend (more on which later), the best bits of the Top 40 chart show (where the skill was to start and stop recording at just the right point to avoid taping the DJ), a copy of your favourite disco album to listen to while out roller-skating (which appeared to be what everyone in America was doing), or just personal reflections, it was a way to preserve audio that had not been available in the home before. And it was this element that, in my opinion, changed the world.
Take the punk movement, for example. The whole DIY music philosophy was able to thrive because bands could record songs in their garage, duplicate them, knock up dodgy photocopied covers, and distribute to friends, journalists, and, inevitably, John Peel. Peel’s legendary radio show broadcast the debuts of countless bands, the vast majority of which sank without trace, but a select few went on to create music that influenced the generations that followed. And all of these bands, at least during the ’70s and ’80s, got their first play on his show by sending in a demo tape.
Former Communist countries were able to listen to Western music via tapes recorded from the radio or smuggled in from outside (their small size much easier to hide than 12” records). Outlawed political and religious movements used cassettes to spread the word. Audiobooks, already a popular format in their own right, became more freely available, and finally brought the joy of books to many blind children and adults who could not read or get access to Braille editions. Cassette tapes were also the original format for software on early home computers (I’ll bang on about that in a little while).
The in-car cassette player only increased their popularity. Most cars had had radios installed as standard for some time, a few came with 8-track cartridge players, but the tape deck brought pre-recorded music to the daily commute or boring motorway journey (cue opening bars of ‘Born to be Wild’or ‘The Chain’).
They really were everywhere. Huge dumpbins (as they were known in the trade) of blank tapes were on sale in every record shop and electrical store. You could buy many different types, both in terms of recording quality (to be honest, I never really understood the difference, and was never convinced to shell out for a posh ‘metal’ tape – it would have been a bit pointless when all I was doing was taping from the radio and creating mixtapes) and recording length. The most popular formats were C60 (30 minutes each side), C90 (45 minutes each side), and C120 (oh, you get the idea), but there was a myriad of other versions ranging from C15 (for answer phones and Dictaphones) to C240 (which were crap and kept getting chewed up).
You could use them time and time again, and even the pre-recorded ones could be taped over. We have all at one point or another nicked mum’s Acker Bilk Best Of, stuck a bit of Sellotape over the corner (or ‘write-protect tab’, to give it its proper name), just in time to record the best bits of the Top 40.
Despite its success, the format was not without its problems, the most troubling of which, for the music industry at least, was the explosion of piracy. Suddenly, any Tom, Dick, or Harry could make a cheap recording of a an LP and sell it, or pass it on for free. And piracy did indeed become a big problem, with huge networks of crooks reproducing bestselling albums on tape in bulk, and selling them at market stalls, in pubs, and out of the back of lorries. Many did attempt to make the finished item look legit, but the majority of pirated tapes coming out of the Far East were, shall we say, well dodgy.
While the millionaire record executives did attempt to clamp down on this illegal black market, they also tried to scare the people at home with their staggeringly unsuccessful ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’ campaign, featuring a cassette skull and crossbones. Their point, and they did have one, was that every time you taped a copy of the new Madness album to give to your mate, that was a few quid that didn’t find its way into their bulging pockets or get to the rather more deserving artists themselves.
What the campaign failed to recognise was that the mixtape culture, the idea of creating your own compilation and sharing it with friends, was as powerful a source of recommendation, new music and discovery as any radio station, TV show, or advertising campaign. It is pretty much accepted now that for every pound lost to a pirate tape, at least the same came into the industry from someone who had just discovered Blondie via a compilation made by Dave in Year 5.
There were physical problems with the format as well. Not every cassette player was calibrated to play at the same speed, so you could sometimes find yourself listening to Barry White but it sounding more like the Bee Gees. Their compact size meant they were a lot easier to lose than their 12” vinyl counterpart. They were also completely buggered if you stepped on them.
The most common issue was that they would quite frequently get chewed up. A worrying warble in the vocals would warn you that it was coming, and then the music could come to a complete stop. You’d open up the cassette deck to discover anything from a few inches to several feet of dark brown tape being spewed out. If you were lucky and the whole thing wasn’t mangled beyond salvation, you could remedy matters by inserting a pencil into one of the reels and manually rewinding it by hand, either by patiently twisting or, my preferred method, by spinning it around like a football rattle.
The advent of the compact disc spelled the demise of the compact cassette. Although they valiantly held their own for most of the 1990s, helped by the sheer proliferation of players, car stereos and the fact that lots of people hadn’t got round to buying CD players yet, most record companies had ceased production by the beginning of the new millennium due to lack of demand.
Sales of blank tapes limped on. By 1988, over 3 billion blank cassettes had been sold in the UK, at a peak of 50 million a year. By 2007, this had slipped to 5 million, and numbers were plummeting fast.
However, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel. TDK, one of the leading manufacturers of blank tapes, reports sales slowly beginning to rise. No one is quite sure why, but theories include the fact that people are still buying them for cars or at home, the police still have to use tape for any suspect interviews and, in a bizarre twist, new bands are often distributing their music by cassette as the format is now so difficult to pirate in our digital age.
So, while the heyday of the cassette is definitely behind us, it seems that a small number may survive for a while yet.
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Mixtapes
Creating the perfect mixtape took hours of planning.
First, you’d have to decide what sort of theme you were going for. Just a collection of favourite songs to play in the car was fine, but there were many more speciality areas, of which these are just a few:
Potential New Girlfriend/Boyfriend Mix. Possibly the most important of all mixtapes, a group of songs intended, often through subliminal messages, to persuade a potential partner what a splendid catch you were – witty, well-rounded, thoughtful, and with great taste in music. Song choice would almost always be a blend of your all-time faves (if they don’t like ‘This Must Be the Place’, then they clearly aren’t the one for me) and songs that sort of hinted at the fact that you wanted to get into their pants. You needed to be subtle, but not too subtle. The recipient was to be left in little doubt that you were up for it, but the content would be ambiguous enough that you could deny all if they proved to be less than keen. Countless romances were started in this