Reeling in my obsession for frustrating music format - Scott Reid

I doubt many people will share my enthusiasm for the cassette. Those that can remember this humble little music format are likely to have less-than-fond memories of warbling sound, endless rewinding and temperamental tape decks spewing out miles of chewed up recordings.

Some of my 'new old stock' blank cassettes - tapes produced decades ago, in some cases, that remain in their sealed packaging.

The compact audio cassette was of its day. Invented by Dutch electronics giant Philips back in the early 1960s the format peaked in the 1990s, when pre-recorded tapes outsold their more expensive CD equivalent and blank tapes sold in their millions to make recordings for in-car playback.

Fair to say that in 2023, amid the convenience of digital downloading, smart speakers and streaming, the cassette is somewhat of a niche product. The past couple of years have seen a retro-related revival on the coattails of vinyl’s second coming, but the sales are insignificant.

My attraction to the format, like many of my age, I suspect, began in the 70s with the gift of a radio/cassette player for Christmas, no doubt purchased from a long-lost branch of Comet or Rumbelows. The intervening years have seen me have an on/off affair with the cassette as new music formats came along. I regret, for instance, chucking out more than 150 tapes when I moved out of student digs - retaining just a couple of sentimental mix ones.

However, the past year or so has seen my passion for all-things cassette reignited, and I’m really not sure why. I do know it has rapidly developed into something verging on the obsessive. At the last count I have accumulated two combined CD/radio/cassette players (yes, they are still being made), a few cassette dictaphones (never gelled with their digital equivalent for journalistic duties) and two prized, full-sized hi-fi decks (including a 30-year-old unit that cost just a tenner from a charity shop).

What has become obsessive is my hunting for and subsequent accumulation of “new old stock” blank cassettes - tapes produced decades ago, in some cases, that remain in their sealed packaging, possibly never to be opened, just collected. What sort of person would pay £45 for a triple-pack of C-90s manufactured in 1992? You’ve just found him.