Quartz Obsession/Quincy Tickner: The cassette tape: The first device to put music in our pockets makes an unlikely comeback

Quartz Obsession
The cassette tape: The first device to put music in our pockets makes an unlikely comeback.  

Quartz Obsession The cassette tape December 16, 2017

Call it a comeback

Currently, one company is working to avert a disaster that no one expected in the digital-music era: The world is running out of cassette tapes—specifically, the specialized magnetic tape that stores music in glorious analog detail.

There was a good chance that cassette tapes were going to join their sibling the 8-track in recorded music obscurity. But cassettes are actually enjoying a resurgence right now—and we have Justin Bieber to thank for it.

The Wall Street Journal credits releases from the pop star, along with artists like The Weeknd and Eminem, for kickstarting a cassette renaissance, driven by equal parts nostalgia and economics. Essentially, cassettes are basking in the retro glow of vinyl records: They’re possessable, giftable, hand-holdable, but also affordable.

Let’s rewind.

renaissance problems
Save the tape

The shortage of magnetic tape is intertwined with the even larger renaissance of vinyl records: Both are surfing the same wave of nostalgia for old recording formats, and the vinyl boom has created a new niche for cassettes. They’re cheaper and require less lead time for production.

The Journal reports that a manufacturer called National Audio Company has been managing a dwindling stockpile of tape since most US suppliers shut down. It’s restarting production to satisfy demand from musicians like Metallica and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who insisted that “The Hamilton Mixtape” be available as a cassette.

“Tape-making is complicated,” the Journal notes. “The process includes a finely calibrated slurry of metallic particles and polyurethane, miles of Mylar, 48 feet of ovens, a small amount of radioactivity and a very precise slicer.” You can watch a video about National Audio here.
By The Digits

129,000: Number of cassette tapes sold in 2016

74%: Growth in cassette tape sales versus 2015

3.8 mm: Width of cassette tape

95%: Proportion of cassettes produced in the western hemisphere manufactured by National Audio Company

48 feet: Length of ovens needed to manufacture cassette tape at the National Audio factory
Ribbon of rust
How does cassette tape work?

Cassette tape is coated with magnetic particles, either iron oxide or chromium oxide. These particles are shaped like tiny needles, about 400 million per inch.

Next, the particles are mixed with binder and—under extreme dust-free conditions—transferred onto wide rolls of polyester plastic film. Once the coating has been smoothed, dried, and polished, it’s cut into 3.8mm-wide strips.
cassettetapes_1

The process of recording sounds onto a cassette tape is simple. Once the cassette is placed in the tape recorder, the magnetic tape inside the cassette passes around the five magnetic heads of the recorder.

Each magnetic head realigns the magnetic particles on the passing tape in patterns that correspond to the loudness and frequency (rate of vibration) of the incoming sounds. The magnetic coating allows sound to be either recorded or erased.
cassettetapes_2

Learn more here.
take me down this 🐰 hole!

The New York Times 1981 guide to buying cassette tapes: “All these tape types have slightly different sonic flavors. One might sound more brilliant while another has a more mellow character, differences that one sound buff has compared to the fine distinctions between various brews of beer.”
Pop Quiz!
What album sold the most copies on cassette in 2016?
Purple Rain by Prince Purpose by Justin Bieber Guardians of the GalaxyLed Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin
Correct. 4,000 copies of Guardians of the Galaxy cassette tapes were sold in 2016
Incorrect. That's an 8-track answer in a cassette tape world.
If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email.
Quotable

“To me, making a tape is like writing a letter—there’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention … and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and … oh, there are loads of rules.”

-Nick Hornby, “High Fidelity”
Handy Guide
The tale of the tapes

Ferric Tape:
cassettetapes_3

This is the cheapest type of cassette tape. Ferric tape is coated with iron oxide, which is why tech engineers refer to them as “ribbons of rust.” Ferric tape was the first type of cassette tape and has been upgraded over the years to include smaller and more evenly distributed magnetic particles.

Chrome Tape:
cassettetapes_4

The second type of magnetic tape developed. Chrome tape is coated with chromium oxide, which gives it more clearly defined high frequencies, exact definition of musical details, and a quieter background.

Chrome-Equivalent Tape:
cassettetapes_5

Also referred to as high-bias tape, this tape is coated with ferric particles chemically bonded with cobalt. It achieves a close sonic resemblance to chrome tape. Chrome-equivalent tape yields excellent sound and ranks among the favorites of audio fans who focus on high fidelity.

Ferrichrome Tape:
cassettetapes_6

A thin layer of chrome is superimposed on a ferric substrate which emphasizes the high and low ends of the sonic spectrum. This type of tape appeals to people who listen to cassettes in the car where the treble and bass are often drowned in the road and engine noise.

Metal Tape:
cassettetapes_7

This is the only type of tape that uses metal particles instead of oxides. Metal tape is used when making live recordings of musical performances through microphones.
Timeline

1928: Influenced by magnetic wire recording, Fritz Pfleumer invents magnetic tape for sound recording in Germany.

1932: The first reel-to-reel tape recorder, the Magnetophon, is developed by engineers of the German Electronic Company.
cassettetapes_8

1936: The first public use of the Magnetophon records the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham in Ludwigshafen.

1946: The first American-built Magnetophons are manufactured in San Francisco.

1963: Philips develops the first cassette tape and cassette recorder.
cassettetapes_9

1966: Pre-recorded compact cassette tapes (Musicassettes) in stereo come on the market.

1968: The first cassette player is built into a car radio.
cassettetapes_10

1975: Compact cassette tapes are used for storing data in computers.

1988: The cassette tape enjoys its best year of sales in the US, selling 450.1 million units.

1993: Cassette tape sales start their steep decline as the CD rises.
Origin story

It took the initiative of US Army Signal Corps officer Major John T. “Jack” Mullin, to introduce magnetic tape and tape recording to America. While based in Paris during and after WWII, Mullin noticed the “live” sound quality when listening to classical music broadcasted from the German Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG) station.

After the war was over, Mullin and his team confiscated German magnetophons and 50 reels of tape.
cassettetapes_11

Once Mullin got back to America, he and his partner Bill Palmer—of W.A. Palmer Films—built two Magnetophons with American electronics. After this, dozens of American companies joined the race to build the best professional and consumer-based tape recorders.
Quotable II
“Plus, tapes fit in your breast pocket, which is pretty great,”

– Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Hamilton” composer
Make a case out of it
Why listen to cassettes?

Before CDs or MP3s, there were four ways you could listen to recorded music: vinyl records, reel-to-reel tapes, 8-tracks, and cassettes.

Vinyl was the best option for sound quality and cassettes were best for portability. Cassette tapes were the first technology that let you walk and drive around with music in your hands or in your stereo. Combined with their cheap price, this feature gave the cassette tape a good 20-year run of popularity.

Nostalgia and analog chic aside, artists are releasing their albums on cassette tapes today for two reasons. Cassettes are a lot cheaper to manufacture than vinyl records. A hundred cassettes can be made in a few weeks for only a few hundred dollars, compared with months and thousands of dollars for vinyl.

The second reason is cassettes inspire fans to actually buy music, rather than stream it. Artists are also packaging cassettes with download coupons so that fans can have digital downloads as well. Cassette doesn’t exactly have the audio quality of vinyl, but it does have a lo-fi analog appeal. “The hissing sound that’s always in the background on a tape, the imperfections of the tape running on the heads of a tape player—it’s a unique quality,” Los Angeles rapper Alexander Spit told the Wall Street Journal. And collecting them doesn’t have the economic barrier that vinyl can bring: Even modern high-end players cost less than $150, and new and used cassettes can be procured for only a few dollars.
📣 The ultimate mixtape!!
Time to jam

Yesterday we asked you to write in with your favorite songs from mixtapes gone by:

“My dad’s car—a 2000 Volkswagen Cabrio convertible—does not have a CD player, only a tape player. To this day he makes mixtapes for that car, a painstaking process that I bypass with one of those tapes you can plug into the headphone jack. But I have vivid memories of learning to drive stick shift in that car to “One Headlight” (The Wallflowers) and “The Way” (Fastball). Such great tunes. The effect just isn’t the same when I listen to the same tracks on my phone.”

– Obsession reader Olivia

“I used to listen to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on cassette. This was in middle school—around 1997—and I was starting to go to school dances. I remember thinking that, if I practiced dancing in my room, I would have the moves I needed for the dance. I cannot recall exactly where I got the tape; I think I heard one of the songs, and asked my parents to get me a copy. Once I heard the soundtrack, I was hooked. And “Night Fever” was the clear favorite. Still use some of the moves I developed there today! Mostly at weddings.”

– Obsession reader Derek

We had so many great suggestions, we just had to compile them in a mix. It’s 23 songs long with a runtime of exactly 90 minutes (the length of most audio cassettes). We’re aware that doesn’t leave time for crossfades, but since you can skip directly from song to song, we didn’t see the need for silence.

Click below for the Ultimate Quartz Obsession Mixtape 👇
The Ultimate Quartz Obsession Mixtape
Poll
Which do you prefer, the perfection of digital music or the gritty reality of analog audio?
Click here to vote
I want to hear the imperfections of life coming out of my speakers: Analog all the way.I can carry the world’s music, in flawless high fidelity, right in my pocket: Digital for me, please.I’m not sure the difference is anything more than hipster propaganda.
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The Fine Print

In yesterday’s Choco Pie poll, we asked you about your feelings concerning the chocolate-covered marshmallow cookie treats. Most of you (33%) said you wanted your sweets sans bigotry; only slightly fewer (28%) said you’d be game for a back-alley meet-up in order to get that sugar fix.

Today’s email was written by Quincey Tickner.

Images: Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording (reel-to-reel tapes), Philips (Philips equipment), AP Photo/Nati Harnik (unwound audio tape)

The correct answer to the quiz is Guardians of the Galaxy.

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