Rewinding history: Why cassettes are making a comeback

Though Gabriel Dominic-Dunlap didn’t grow up with cassettes, he’s now a collector who can be seen sporting a personal tape player. The 20-year-old Duquesne University student only discovered an enthusiasm for the format, which hit peak popularity in the 1980s, within the past few months. He carries tapes from his small collection with him to listen on his way to class and while walking around town. “The retro aspect is kind of cool, but it’s definitely just the feeling of being able to take out a cassette album, flipping it around and the sound of it closing in,” Dominic-Dunlap said. “You hear the mechanisms turning when you first play it and fall in love with it.”

Similar to the resurgence of vinyl records — though to a lesser degree, sales-wise — the two-spooled, magnetic cassette tape hasn’t quite stayed in the past. Though a more portable option than vinyl, tapes are imperfect — degrading with time and, even when new, blanketing music with a warm hiss. And alongside current artists including Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny releasing new music on cassette, some Pittsburgh record store owners are seeing an uptick in interest in the format. Their theories as to why range from user sentimentality to a desire, in this age of streaming, to again be able to physically hold music that’s actually owned. The Attic in Millvale recently started offering a collection of tapes, which now fills two floor-to-ceiling shelves. Enough are being sold to make their curation worth it, said 51-year-old owner Fred Bohn Jr., of Shaler.

Noticing heightened interest for the format around a year ago, Bohn said the store has since been able to buy entire cassette collections and resell them at a small profit. “It was just a huge response. People started coming out of the woodwork just to see what cassettes we had,” Bohn said. Data show that Bohn isn’t the only person seeing an increase in cassette sales and interest. Sales increased by 28% in 2022, per music industry tracker Luminate, with 440,000 cassettes sold, up from 343,000 the year prior. It’s a small slice, with total sales of physical albums — cassettes, CDs and vinyl — at 79.9 million in 2022.

The top album of 2024 on cassette, according to Luminate, was Taylor Swift’s new “The Tortured Poets Department,” with 25,000 sold. Not far behind, with 23,000 sold, was “Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1,” originally released in 2014.

Other big-name music artists and labels are also selling cassettes. On Amazon, you can order Sabrina Carpenter’s most recent album “Man’s Best Friend,” released in late August, on cassette for $15.97. A new tape of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” is available for a similar price. You can even order the soundtrack for the popular video game Minecraft, “Volume Alpha,” on the format. But there are plenty of used cassettes available as well. And for fans of the format who are wanting to make their own mixtapes or physical audio journals, Jerry’s Records in Squirrel Hill also sells blank cassettes.

Used cassettes make up a chunk of Eric Stevens’ collection; the Greenfield resident has kept the format close his entire life. Stevens, who runs a cassette tape-based record label called Michi Tapes, grew up with cassettes through the 1990s and early 2000s, listening to the likes of “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” by Oasis and “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young. As an eighth grader at Saint Marys Area Middle School, he remembers queueing up a cassette of “Dazed and Confused” by Led Zeppelin for a music analysis presentation. At 34, he boasts a collection of nearly 300 tapes, around 100 of which are 90-minute mixtapes recorded from the radio. The other 200 are made up of local bands, some recorded through his Michi Tapes label, in addition to other genres such as jazz and classical.

“I feel like the sliding scale of disintegration of sound is a little more subtle. It feels like just the highs get shaved off, but you can still listen to a tape that’s aging and being worn over the years,” Stevens said. “Obviously, it’s not as good as if it’s a fresh tape or something, but I think as far as listenability it’s a little smoother even if it’s messed up.” Chris Grauzer, a 42-year-old Swissvale resident who owns Jerry’s Records, hasn’t quite been able to pin down the reason behind this reigniting of cassette culture. He said people his age seem to be interested in VHS tapes because of nostalgia, and the same could apply to an increase in a passion for cassettes. But the demographic of cassette tape customers he’s used to seeing skews even younger.

“I’m seeing 20-year-olds, 25-year-olds, people that were born after 2000 that are into cassettes,” Grauzer said. “And that’s wild to me, because it’s clearly not a nostalgia thing. They didn’t grow up with them.” Bohn’s cassette customers, he said, similarly tend to be in their early 20s. Perhaps the younger generations are more interested in formats that are tangible, that they can hold, Grauzer said. He theorized that some may be “fed up” with the digital world and streaming services that provide access to artists’ music — rather than the ability to own it. Dominic-Dunlap said he enjoys that physical aspect of cassettes, and that once he purchases the music he owns it forever.

“More and more it seems like you gotta buy a subscription of this or pay for a monthly or yearly subscription of that just to own what you paid for, for a limited amount of time,” he explained. “That’s why a lot of people are going back to physical media.” There’s also the presence of cassette culture in popular media to consider, Grauzer said. In “Guardians of the Galaxy” (2014), main character Peter Quill (played by Chris Pratt) wears a Sony Walkman TPS-L2 — the original Sony cassette player released in 1979 — on his hip and sports orange-padded headphones.

Grauzer saw a surge of people coming into Jerry’s asking about cassettes in relation to the movie, and a similar spike in interest followed the release of “Stranger Things” Season 4 in 2022. In that series, Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) wears a Sony Walkman WM-8 and listens to Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.” The song protected her from succumbing to the main antagonist, culminating in an epic scene with an orchestral rendition of the song. The vinyl of the LP with “Running Up That Hill,” on Kate Bush’s fifth studio album “Hounds of Love” (1985), surged in price to over $100, Grauzer recalled. Online prices for the Sony Walkman WM-8 also increased, and many used models on eBay are currently listed for hundreds of dollars.

“If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me for ‘Running Up That Hill,’ I’d be a rich man,” Grauzer said. Dominic-Dunlap said finding his player was a difficult process. He originally looked into buying an old Sony Walkman but couldn’t justify the cost. So he took to an online hunt, and ended up with an RTM Industries player.

Samuel Long, Tribune News Service