you be the judge
"CDs just aren’t interesting—they’re too disposable." -- Matt Sullivan, Nailbat Tapes co-founder
With music consumers going through a vinyl renaissance, you may think the above quote is from a fan of vinyl records. It's actually from the co-founder of a cassette-only label. This week's Nashville Scene has an article on Nashville-based Nailbat Tapes. (The label's MySpace page does stream songs, so there is a bit of a digital aspect here.) Not only are cassettes cheaper than vinyl to manufacture, they lend themselves to a certain type of music.
Clarity and convenience may have made CDs and MP3s the weapon of choice for most fans, but it’s the very unwanted artifacts and sonic colorations for which vinyl and analog were previously shunned that have kept these formats alive with underground audiences. And now, the hiss, distortion and limited dynamics of cassettes are incorporated into the music itself.
According to Sullivan, when consumers lost the hassle of scratched records and the tedious process of fast-forwarding our tapes to the next song, the music also lost a great deal of its identity. “Sometimes the medium becomes part of the aesthetic of the song,” he says. “A lot of the time I write songs specifically for playback on a cassette.”
Nashville sure does love cassettes. Nashville-based label, Infinity Cat, sells offers a release by JEFF on cassette.
Not knowing of any other cassette-only labels, I did a Google search to see what else is out there. The appropriately-named Dead Format Cassette Label has a MySpace page and says of its business model, "Pretty stupid, huh?" Hiss Lab's two releases are cassette singles but offers MP3 downloads as backups.
Previously on Coolfer: I posted about cassettes in December 2006. "Though cassettes account for only 1% of music sales, they are responsible for 37% of all audio book sales. Why is that? (The New York Times' Andrew Adam) Newman gives a few reasons. First, the cassette lends itself to the audio book. Rewinding is simple, and older CD players do not start where you left off. Also, 53% of people listen to audio books in cars, and most cars have cassette players." -Coolfer
With music consumers going through a vinyl renaissance, you may think the above quote is from a fan of vinyl records. It's actually from the co-founder of a cassette-only label. This week's Nashville Scene has an article on Nashville-based Nailbat Tapes. (The label's MySpace page does stream songs, so there is a bit of a digital aspect here.) Not only are cassettes cheaper than vinyl to manufacture, they lend themselves to a certain type of music.
Clarity and convenience may have made CDs and MP3s the weapon of choice for most fans, but it’s the very unwanted artifacts and sonic colorations for which vinyl and analog were previously shunned that have kept these formats alive with underground audiences. And now, the hiss, distortion and limited dynamics of cassettes are incorporated into the music itself.
According to Sullivan, when consumers lost the hassle of scratched records and the tedious process of fast-forwarding our tapes to the next song, the music also lost a great deal of its identity. “Sometimes the medium becomes part of the aesthetic of the song,” he says. “A lot of the time I write songs specifically for playback on a cassette.”
Nashville sure does love cassettes. Nashville-based label, Infinity Cat, sells offers a release by JEFF on cassette.
Not knowing of any other cassette-only labels, I did a Google search to see what else is out there. The appropriately-named Dead Format Cassette Label has a MySpace page and says of its business model, "Pretty stupid, huh?" Hiss Lab's two releases are cassette singles but offers MP3 downloads as backups.
Previously on Coolfer: I posted about cassettes in December 2006. "Though cassettes account for only 1% of music sales, they are responsible for 37% of all audio book sales. Why is that? (The New York Times' Andrew Adam) Newman gives a few reasons. First, the cassette lends itself to the audio book. Rewinding is simple, and older CD players do not start where you left off. Also, 53% of people listen to audio books in cars, and most cars have cassette players." -Coolfer
