By the end of the decade, a lot of new singles weren’t even being released on vinyl any longer. By the late 1970s, the two formats were all but neck and neck in the marketplace by the early 1980s, and the introduction of the Walkman personal cassette player, tapes were actually inching ahead. Now they wanted to soundtrack everything, and once Dolby introduced its noise reduction system, they did so, not only consigning 8-tracks to the junkheap, but also moving in on vinyl. That particular war would not be won until the mid-1970s or so, but by that time, the cassette’s ambitions had spilled far, far beyond soundtracking your latest road trip. Initially, cassettes - like 8-tracks - were aimed almost exclusively at the lucrative in-car entertainment market, with the different car manufacturers lining up behind one format or the other. Now, you want to talk dinosaurs, the 8-track fulfills all criteria, including the tyrannosaurus foot stomp that was the sound of it changing “sides.” The cassette, though, was durable, elegant, convenient, tiny - you could fit four into the space that an 8-track consumed, and there were no thunder lizards stomping through the music, either.
The cassette first appeared on the market in the mid-1960s, the love child of the music industry’s drive to popularize stereo sound, and a few manufacturers’ urge to compete with the newly introduced 8-track.
You want not to spend a couple of hundred bucks on a thumbnail-sized player that the dog will probably swallow tomorrow? Buy a cassette.Ĭassettes: How did we ever live without them? And why would we even want to? You want to relive a gig over and over? Bring your cassette. You want to make a mix for a loved one of all your favorite songs? Make a cassette. You want an album that doesn’t skip or scratch? Play a cassette.
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