What it’s like to sell cassettes in 2015
Cassettes are making a retro comeback and, just like that, you’re old.
Ben Katzman (left) and Chris Collins (right).
When Ben Katzman founded BUFU Records, a punk-flavored, perpetually upbeat music label in Jamaica Plain, his distribution method didn’t take into account modern technology or, well, logic.
“I said: ‘We’re going to make a [expletive] of cassettes,’’’ Katzman said.
And Katzman did: His two-man BUFU venture – short for “By Us For Us’’ – has released three times as many albums on cassette as on vinyl since its 2012 launch.
With sale prices averaging about $5 per tape, the throwback effort can be viewed as either cost-effective fringe marketing or a hokey retro gimmick.
Let’s hit pause for a moment to consider the weirdness of selling cassettes in 2015.
A 23-year-old singer-guitarist, Katzman isn’t exactly old enough to recall the audio format’s mainstream heyday. (He can cite early childhood memories of dancing around the house to mid-’90s-era tapes that included Ricky Martin and the Batman Forever soundtrack.)
Music fans still flock to vinyl for its sound quality and prestige. But cassette buyers aren’t drawn in by wide inventory or convenience. Tapes pop and hiss. When a machine acts up, the cartridge’s stringy guts have to be rewound with a pencil.
And good luck enjoying one in a newer car or home stereo.
Still, “People like physical music, to have it in their hand,’’ said Katzman, whose band, DeGreaser, has put out two albums on tape. He says cassettes are “almost like an adult’s version of trading cards.’’
What about compact discs?
“They don’t really sell,’’ he said.
According to Nielsen SoundScan, CDs have accounted for a shrinking percentage of total U.S. album sales since 2009. The 140 million copies sold last year marked a 14.9 percent decline from 2013 sales. Paid downloads dropped, too, while vinyl and streaming services each saw high double-digit gains.
Cassettes aren’t even tallied.
“People are kind of shocked when they see them at a merchandise table,’’ said Stoughton rock musician Jason Tankerley, 30, who has released several cassette albums and – remember these? – cassingles. He suspects that some buyers acquire them as keepsakes, not for listening.
“It’s a conversation starter, at least,’’ he said. “And we do sell a bunch of them.’’
A few artists closer to the mainstream are embracing the resurgence of tapes: Sufjan Stevens, Best Coast, and Karen O, to name a few, have offered up their own cassettes in recent months.
Free Pizza ‘Boston, MA’ is a record BUFU put out and is one of their favorites.
In April, Metallica sold a limited edition of its 1982 No Life ‘Til Leather demo tape as a cassette-only release for Record Store Day. The move, drummer Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone, was meant to recall the then-unsigned band’s homespun ambitions to “feel like we belonged to something.’’
Longtime Amherst-based rockers Dinosaur Jr. went even further a few years ago: They reissued 500 respective copies of their first three albums as a limited edition cassette box set.
Urban Outfitters, which touts itself as the world’s largest brick-and-mortar vinyl vendor, is now hawking portable tape players and decks. This week, the Philadelphia-based chain announced that it would carry exclusive tape-only releases by artists such as Run the Jewels and Marina & the Diamonds. Boom boxes and Walkmen, Katzman said, fly from area thrift-store shelves. An Etsy search returned more than 7,000 deadstock items and tape-shaped handicrafts.
And yes, there is a Cassette Store Day. In fact, established in 2013, it takes place this year on Saturday, October 17.The last one, in September 2014, included just one Boston music retailer: Underground Hip Hop near Symphony Hall.
Cassettes may even have a bigger future: Last year, Sony announced a partnership with another former giant, IBM, to develop ultra-roomy magnetic-tape technology that, with its microscopic storage particles, could hold a whopping 47 million tunes on a single cassette.
That doesn’t mean everyone understands all the noise.
Prince Charles Alexander, a professor in the Music and Engineering department at Berklee College of Music – an institution that, he’s quick to point out, removed the bulk of its analog equipment in 2009 – certainly doesn’t.
“It’s like going to the moon and then going back to the moon,’’ said the 57-year old South End native, who, as a New York studio engineer in the late-1990s, helped nudge Mary J. Blige and Sean Combs (Puff Daddy back then) toward digital recording tools. “At some point, we want to go to Mars.’’
Still, Alexander gets the newfound purpose of tapes: “These days, it’s a differentiator. The analog person is the rebel.’’
In an age when crystal-clear audio can be instantly accessed with a click, the lowly tape can evoke a layer of mystique for bands. Given its well-known flaws, it may even earn a bit of forgiveness from listeners.
Production costs are cheap and the parameters reasonable.
“You can have 25 cassettes made,’’ said Ryan Young, 27, guitarist for Newton-based indie-pop band Elephants. “You can’t have 25 records made.’’
For lo-fi acts such as Elephants, whose members cited the warmth and fullness of tape audio, the delivery method suits the music.
“It’s ‘just’ a cassette, which is liberating. It lets the id back in the room. There’s a feeling of impunity,’’ Nick Sylvester, founder of the New York label GODMODE, wrote on Pitchfork. “The music feels like a secret between friends.’’
Inside Deep Thoughts in Jamaica Plain.
At Jamaica Plain record store Deep Thoughts, about 300 cassettes of varying age and genre number among the inventory, assistant manager Will Mayo said. The tapes come mostly from obscure art-rock and local acts that wouldn’t register with the masses.
Not that obscurity should be a deterrent.
“It’s that buy-the-ticket, take-the-ride sort of feel; you don’t have that urge to hit the skip button – because you can’t,’’ said Mayo, 32, who throws on a random cassette most evenings on the stereo in his Allston home. “Then, halfway through (the album), you get jolted out of your stupor by the [expletive] machine.’’
Mayo, a synth and bass player who has recorded his own homemade cassettes, says the appeal of the medium lies in its imperfections: “Tapes get dirty, they fall apart.That’s almost like this whole loaded central metaphor for noise music itself. It fits. It never went away from that kind of subculture.’’
That explains why Boston garage-punk trio Dinoczar, despite uploading its music to Bandcamp and Spotify, continues to sell cassettes for a few bucks. Cassettes are the only non-digital format they embrace.
In underground and house-show circles, the exchange of tapes “isn’t much of a surprise anymore,’’ said Aaron Swartz, the band’s 22-year-old drummer, who, on a recent flight from Boston to the West Coast, nonetheless drew stares and curious comments from nearby passengers after pulling out a cassette player. “It gives us a lot of creative freedom.’’
The Dinoczar musicians, all Northeastern University students, live that ethos to the fullest: They own a professional dual-deck player (acquired for $30 at a Somerville garage sale) to dub copies one by one. “J-Card’’ liner notes, meanwhile, are copied and cut at a Staples copy center. A stencil is used to airbrush text onto the cassettes.
Toby Aaronson, co-founder of the NNA Tapes label in Burlington, Vermont, opts for a more polished approach. After founding his venture in 2008, the result of seeing more tapes appearing at art-gallery concerts around New England, he outsources production to a manufacturer in Missouri.
He has since overseen 65 albums by NNA artists on cassette (only 15, by comparison, have come out on vinyl) and shipped the products, sold online, around the world. Not immune to the times, Aaronson includes an album-download code with each tape.
The 29-year-old isn’t making big profits from his venture. But he’s going to continue to let the decks run.
“Tapes are a little more, you know, sexy – it’s an object that turns and moves,’’ Aronson said. “There’s nothing like having a little boom box, popping in a tape on a summer while sitting on your porch.
“It’s more than the sound; it’s the experience of pressing ‘Play.’’’
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