Summary
- Cassette tape sales are up by 443% in the US, driven by Gen-Z’s interest in albums by Metallica, Taylor Swift, and Nirvana.
- Cassette tapes do not possess the audiophile status of vinyl records and give listeners a retro and unique vibe.
- Cassettes degrade quickly, unlike CDs, and are more of a nostalgic trend rather than a logical choice for music collection.
You might have seen the news reports with tongue-in-cheek segments noting the uptick in people collecting and listening to cassette tapes. Yes, those fiddly plastic rectangles I thought we’d left long behind once people figured out how to put a CD player in a car.
It’s bemusing to say the least, though, as I’ve read more about this phenomenon, I sort of understand its appeal, but it appeals to me personally in no way at all as someone who had to live through the cassette era.
Yes, People Are Getting Into Cassettes Again
Billboard noted that between 2015 and 2022 cassette tapes experienced a 443% increase in US sales. Now Gen-Z listeners are driving sales of albums in this format, with albums from Metallica, Taylor Swift, and Nirvana driving cassette sales in 2023.
Watching this 2025 CBS feature on the newfound popularity of cassettes, we see that there’s a strong, young collector movement and brick-and-mortar music stores that have been largely vinyl and CD sellers up to this point are finding cassettes becoming a new cash cow.
So, for whatever reason, tapes are having a moment.
Cassettes Don’t Have the (Undeserved) Audiophile Cred of Vinyl
One of the main supposed reasons people like vinyl records is because they argue that these records offer superior sound compared to digital audio. I never bought into this, and I was absolutely floored by the improvement we had, going from LPs to CDs in the 90s in my home, but after watching The Truth About Vinyls I was completely convinced the vinyl quality claims were hot air.
Whether you buy into it or not (could you tell if you were listening to a lossless digital recording of a vinyl?) it’s at least a view with many elaborate arguments as to why you might want to listen to a vinyl recording instead of a pristine lossless master of a song—but no one is arguing that for cassettes.
Cassette tapes were always a compromise. People knew that they didn’t sound as good as the LPs or CDs you had at home, but we accepted the tradeoff because they were cheaper, more compact, and you could take them with you in a car, or play them in a portable player.
So, clearly, people aren’t buying them because they think they sound better than the digital music they were already listening to.
Related
Actually, Cassettes Are Horrible
It’s not just the lack of sound quality that baffles me about this trend. Cassettes are an utter pain to live with. For one thing, they degrade pretty quickly. The more you play them, the more they become stretched, the weaker the magnetic recording becomes, and the less fidelity you have on the tape.
One of the absolute best things about CDs is that, unlike tapes and LPs, you can play the disc as much as you like without ever adding wear and tear to it. Sure, CDs can rot, but my parents still have plenty of CDs they bought in the early 90s that play as perfectly today as they did over 30 years ago. You can bet there’s not a single tape left though.
That’s before we get into the potential for sudden, catastrophic failure. I’ve had to rescue tapes more in my life than I’d like to remember, and you’re lucky if the cassette can be saved, even if you spend an hour twiddling two pencils to retract its spilled guts.
Just Buy CDs and Rip Them or Use a Discman
One of the arguments I’ve heard is that cassettes offer young people a way to buy and own their music, but, of course, both LPs and CDs offer the same. CDs are by far the superior format, in my opinion, so if you really want to buy older music, that’s the format most likely to still be in good shape, and you can still buy contemporary music on CD. Heck, even MiniDisc is a better (and more interesting) option.
You can then make digital copies of those CDs if you think the portable players are too bulky and then save them on your phone or MP3 player with no DRM.
It’s a Modern Hipster Thing, and That’s OK
Look, I get that this whole cassette tape thing isn’t actually about music. It’s not about sound quality, and it’s hardly about logic. It’s a vibe and an aesthetic. It’s about the ritual of collecting, and fiddling with a cassette player, and turning the whole thing into a bit of an event. It’s partly because of popular nostalgia bait like Stranger Things too.
However, as much as I like physical media, and think people should look for physical copies of the music that’s most important to them, cassette tapes should probably stay in the trash heap of history where they belong.
