RadioActive wrote:

Alright, that does it. I'm keeping those unopened and never used VHS tapes that I found and referred to in a previous thread! Because you never know...

Yup. There's some heavy duty garbage going on there! "Catch up" on IPTV services is somehow illegal (in the US?) but simply hooking up a VCR and recording what you watch on IPTV is not illegal...???

Anyway, back to cassette, where does one go to find anything to play the tapes on these days??
I also don't get why anyone wants to bother with anything that makes it hard to get to a specific song when desired to hear it.
I just like blank cassettes for recording off the radio. 

I still have an old stereo cassette deck from Pioneer that has dual dubbing. I can't remember the last time I used it, but a few years ago, I digitized some old radio stuff of mine from the 80s using it, so it came in handy then. I also have some old still functioning Sony (as opposed to SOWNY!) Walkmens that could be used in a pinch. 

I can't recall the last time I saw a cassette machine for sale anywhere, although clearly if the tapes are back on the market, the thing you need to play them on must be, too. 

Here's an article from earlier last year on the phenomenon:

UK music fans snap up 65,000 cassettes in 2020

The interesting point is that many people aren't buying cassettes to actually listen to (they also get a download link to actually listen to the music online) but as merchandise because in the age of streaming, music fans are yearning for something tangible they can have as well. 

"There's also a wide range of tape players available, including personal stereos - but the format is more likely to be sold as merchandise than to play, experts say." ..."Alongside core fans, younger consumers are now buying into their collectible appeal - as they have done with vinyl - and the more they do this, the greater the demand for labels and artists to cater to," ...

"The thing [cassettes and vinyl] have in common is that they are memorabilia. It's almost like a gaping hole in the modern music business. Rather than sitting on display on your shelves, your music sits ephemerally in a cloud somewhere.Countries like Japan, Korea and China cater more for music fans in terms of the merchandise they offered, he added."TenCent [the Chinese tech giant] makes many multiple times more revenue from its music products than from its streaming," he said.

Last edited by Hansa (January 4, 2021 12:22 pm)

11 or 12 years ago, I bought a used Nakamichi cassette deck for $20 off an ebay seller in Toronto.  OK, it was a lower end deck (CR-20) but the thing is built like a tank and worked like new the last time I used it about 6 months ago.   I'm surprised the cassettes themselves have survived.

At that time, I found a box of 10 sealed Maxell XL-II cassettes.  What on earth am I going to do with them?  If I need to record audio I've got two Sony PCM-M10 recorders that do an admirable job.  If fact, I use a Sony to dub off cassettes from my Nakamichi.  
 

I have about 500 cassettes left over from the format's heydey.  I have two decks from the 80s
A Rotel deck with B/C-Type NR
A Technics deck from about 1983 with B-Type and dbx NR

I recently purchase a used Toyota Camry (I like old cars), and I was originally hoping I just might find a car with a tape deck.  If that were the case, I was going to take some of the 100 mixtape cassettes I have, and record new mixed music for the car from my PC to cassette.  But alas, my 1999 automobile has a CD player in it, so I'll be resuming the almost equally vintage process of burning CDs fro the car.

Now what to do with all of these tapes....lol