Precursors After the
Second World War, magnetic tape recording technology proliferated across the world. In the United States,
Ampex, using equipment obtained in Germany as a starting point, began commercial production of
reel-to-reel tape recorders. First used by broadcast studios to pre-record radio programs, tape recorders quickly found their way into schools and homes. By 1953, one million U.S. homes had tape machines, and several major record labels were releasing select titles on pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes. In 1958, following four years of development,
RCA Victor introduced the
RCA tape cartridge, which enclosed 60 minutes (30 minutes per side) of stereo quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape within a plastic cartridge that could be utilized on a compatible tape recorder/player without having to thread the tape through the machine. This format was not very successful, and RCA discontinued it in 1964.
Development and release In the early 1960s, Philips tasked two teams to design a high-quality tape cartridge for home use, using thinner and narrower tape than that used in reel-to-reel tape recorders. A team at its Vienna factory, which had experience with
dictation machines, developed the
Einloch-Kassette, or
single-hole cassette, with
Grundig. At the same time, a team in
Hasselt led by
Lou Ottens developed a two-hole cassette under the name
Pocket Recorder. Philips selected the two-spool cartridge as a winner and introduced the 2-track 2-direction mono version in Europe on 28 August 1963 at the
Berlin Radio Show, and in the United States (under the
Norelco brand) in November 1964. The same year, mass production of blank compact cassettes began in
Hanover. After yielding to pressure from
Sony to
license the Compact Cassette format to them free of charge, Philips' format achieved market dominance, with the DC-International cassette format being discontinued in 1967, just two years after its introduction. Philips improved on the Compact Cassette's original design to release a stereo version. By 1966 over 250,000 compact cassette recorders had been sold in the U.S. alone. Japanese manufacturers soon became the leading source of recorders. By 1968, 85 manufacturers had sold over 2.4 million mono and stereo units. By the end of the 1960s, the cassette business was worth an estimated $150 million,
Popularity of music cassettes Pre-recorded
music cassettes (also known as
Music-Cassettes, and later just
Musicassettes) were launched in Europe in late 1965. The
Mercury Record Company, a US affiliate of Philips, introduced Musicassettes to the US in July 1966. The initial offering consisted of 49 titles. The compact cassette format was initially designed for dictation and portable use, and the audio quality of early players was not well-suited for music. In 1971, the
Advent Corporation introduced their Model 201 tape deck that combined
Dolby type B noise reduction and
chromium(IV) oxide (CrO2) tape, with a commercial-grade tape transport mechanism supplied by the Wollensak camera division of 3M Corporation. This resulted in the format being taken more seriously for musical use, and started the era of
high fidelity cassettes and players. British record labels began releasing Musicassettes in October 1967, and they exploded as a mass-market medium after the first
Walkman, the TPS-L2, went on sale on 1 July 1979, as cassettes provided portability, which vinyl records could not. While portable radios and boom boxes had been around for some time, the Walkman was the first truly personal portable music player, one that not only allowed users to listen to music away from home, but to do so in private. According to the technology news website The Verge, "the world changed" on the day the TPS-L2 was released. Stereo tape decks and
boom boxes became some of the most highly sought-after consumer products of both decades, as the ability of users to take their music with them anywhere with ease led to its popularity around the globe. TPS-L2 Like the
transistor radio in the 1950s and 1960s, the
portable CD player in the 1990s, and the
MP3 player in the 2000s, the Walkman defined the portable music market for the decade of the '80s, with cassette sales overtaking those of
LPs. Another barrier to cassettes overtaking vinyl in sales was
shoplifting; compact cassettes were small enough that a thief could easily place one inside a pocket and walk out of a shop without being noticed. To prevent this, retailers in the US would place cassettes inside oversized "spaghetti box" containers or locked
display cases, either of which would significantly inhibit browsing, thus reducing cassette sales. During the early 1980s some record labels sought to solve this problem by introducing new, larger packages for cassettes which would allow them to be displayed alongside vinyl records and
compact discs, or giving them a further market advantage over vinyl by adding
bonus tracks. Critic
Robert Palmer, writing in
The New York Times in 1981, cited the proliferation of personal stereos as well as extra tracks not available on LP as reasons for the surge in popularity of cassettes. Cassettes' ability to allow users to record content in public also led to a boom in
bootleg cassettes made at live shows in the 1980s. The Walkman dominated the decade, selling up to 350 million units. So synonymous did the name "Walkman" become with all portable music players—with a German dictionary at one point defining the term as such without reference to Sony—that the Austrian Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that Sony, which had not sought to have the publisher of that dictionary retract that definition, could not prevent other companies from using that name, as it had now become genericized. As a result of this, a number of Sony's competitors produced their own version of the Walkman. Others made their own branded tape players, like JVC, Panasonic, Sharp, and Aiwa, the second-largest producer of the devices. Between 1985, when cassettes overtook vinyl, and 1992, when they were overtaken by CDs the cassette tape was the most popular format in the United States
Cassette culture Compact cassettes served as catalysts for social change. Their small size, durability and ease of copying helped bring underground rock and punk music behind the
Iron Curtain, creating a foothold for Western culture among the younger generations. Likewise, in Egypt cassettes empowered an unprecedented number of people to create culture, circulate information, and challenge ruling regimes before the internet became publicly accessible. One of the political uses of cassette tapes was the dissemination of sermons by the exiled
Ayatollah Khomeini throughout
Iran before the 1979
Iranian Revolution, in which Khomeini urged the overthrow of the regime of the
Shah,
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. During the
military dictatorship of Chile (1973–1990) a "cassette culture" emerged where
blacklisted music or music that was by other reasons not available as records was shared. Some
pirate cassette producers created brands such as
Cumbre y Cuatro that have in retrospect received praise for their contributions to popular music. Some sales channels were associated with cassettes: in Spain
filling stations often featured a display selling cassettes. While offering also mainstream music these cassettes became associated with genres such as
Gipsy rhumba, light music and joke tapes that were common in the 1970s and 1980s.
Decline Despite sales of CDs overtaking those of pre-recorded cassettes in the early 1990s in the U.S., the format remained popular for specific applications, such as
car audio,
personal stereos,
boomboxes,
telephone answering machines,
dictation,
field recording,
home recording, and
mixtapes well into the decade. Cassette players were typically more resistant to shocks than CD players, and their lower fidelity was not considered a serious drawback in mobile use. With the introduction of
electronic skip protection it became possible to use portable CD players on the go, and automotive CD players became viable.
CD-R drives and media also became affordable for consumers around the same time. By 1993, annual shipments of CD players had reached 5 million, up 21% from the year before; while cassette player shipments had dropped 7% to approximately 3.4 million. Sales of pre-recorded music cassettes in the US dropped from 442 million in 1990 to 274,000 by 2007. For
audiobooks, the final year that cassettes represented more than 50% of total market sales was 2002 when they were replaced by CDs as the dominant media. The last new car with an available cassette player was a 2014
TagAZ AQUiLA. Four years prior, Sony had stopped the production of personal cassette players. In 2011, the
Oxford English Dictionary removed the phrase "cassette player" from its 12th edition Concise version, which prompted some media sources to mistakenly report that the term "cassette tape" was being removed. In India, music continued to be released on the cassette format due to its low cost until 2009.
21st century ,
Myanmar (2006) Although
portable digital recorders are most common today, analog tape remains a desirable option for certain artists and consumers. Underground and
DIY communities release regularly, and sometimes exclusively, on cassette format, particularly in
experimental music circles and to a lesser extent in
hardcore punk,
death metal, and
black metal circles, out of a fondness for the format. Even among major-label stars, the form has at least one devotee:
Thurston Moore stated in 2009, "I only listen to cassettes". By 2019, few companies still made cassettes. Among those are National Audio Company, from the US, and Mulann, also known as Recording The Masters, from France. Sony announced the end of cassette Walkman production on 22 October 2010, a result of the emergence of MP3 players such as Apple's iPod. As of 2022, Sony uses the Walkman brand solely for its line of digital media players. The 2010
Lexus SC430 was the last automobile sold new in North America with a compact cassette player as standard equipment. In 2010, Botswana-based Diamond Studios announced plans for establishing a plant to mass-produce cassettes in a bid to combat piracy. It opened in 2011. In South Korea, the early English education boom for toddlers encourages a continuous demand for English language cassettes, due to the affordable cost.
National Audio Company in Missouri, the largest of the few remaining manufacturers of audio cassettes in the US, oversaw the mass production of the
"Awesome Mix #1" cassette from the film
Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. They reported that they had produced more than 10 million tapes in 2014 and that sales were up 20 percent the following year, their best year since they opened in 1969. In 2016, cassette sales in the United States rose by 74% to 129,000. In 2018, following several years of shortage, National Audio Company began producing their own magnetic tape, becoming the world's first known manufacturer of an all-new tape stock. Mulann, a company which acquired
Pyral/RMGI in 2015 and originates from
BASF, also started production of its new cassette tape stock in 2018, basing on reel tape formula. In Japan and South Korea, the pop acts
Seiko Matsuda,
SHINee, and
NCT 127 released their material on
limited-run cassettes. In
Reiwa era Japan, the revived popularity of cassette tapes is an example of
Showa retro. As of 2021,
Maxell was selling 8 million cassette tapes per year in Japan. In the mid-to-late 2010s, cassette sales saw a modest resurgence concurrent with the
vinyl revival. As early as 2015, the retail chain
Urban Outfitters, which had long sold
LPs, started selling new pre-recorded cassettes (both new and old albums), blank cassettes, and players. In 2016, cassette sales increased, a trend that continued in 2017 and 2018. In the UK, sales of cassette tapes in 2021 reached its highest number since 2003. Cassettes are favored by some artists and listeners, including those of older genres of music such as
dansband, as well as
independent some of whom were releasing new music on tape by the 2020s, including
Britney Spears and
Busta Rhymes. Reasons cited for this include tradition, low cost, and a nostalgic fondness for how the format's imperfections lend greater vibrancy to low-fi, experimental music, despite the lack of the "full-bodied richness" of vinyl. == Tape types ==