I heard a year or two ago that vinyl is coming back, record factories re-opened, and record players are hot once again. Damn that ex-brother-in-law for borrowing my record player and never returning it.
Anyways.
Now the next step is being taken, as Paul Marks reports in NewScientist (25 November 2017, paywall):
Yet some feel there is magic left in the cassette. And so, like vinyl, they are hoping to fuel a revival.
Behind this is what’s billed as the world’s last cassette maker, National Audio Company of Springfield, Missouri. With stock dwindling, and its South Korean supplier no longer making raw tape, it had to act, not only to fuel bands like Metallica that still use cassette, but also a growing number of indie bands who want to do likewise. So it bought machines once used to make magnetic strips for credit cards to repurpose for making tape. …
Music on tape has a unique, vital sound and record labels are picking up on that. Encoding audio as varying magnetic fields, as tape does, is bound to give a different quality to other methods.
For the record (hah!), I do still have a Denon tape player. Hidden in my attic.
