from today's wall street journal...

Gen Z Loves Cassettes. But Wait,
How Do These Things Work...

finding a tune. “You have to keep fast-forwarding, rewinding, pausing and playing to find the right song you want,” Campbell said.

The generation that grew up on Spotify is getting a les- son on how people listened to music in the 1980s and ’90s, when mixtape-filled boom- boxes fueled parties and Sony’s Walkman was the beat- ing edge of technology. Gen Z is being introduced to cas- settes by modern stars, such as Musgraves, Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, who are releasing new music on the plastic rectangles.

You can’t blame these teens and 20-somethings for having a hard time getting the music started. Cassettes were never that easy to use. The sound wasn’t that great either—al- though that didn’t bother Campbell. “I like how nostalgic it sounds,” she said of the crackling that comes out of the speakers.

Molly Clark, 45, said her 13- year-old daughter recently bought a cassette by Norwegian singer Aurora. There was just one problem: She had no way to play it. Clark’s husband dug out his ’90s-era boombox from the at- tic of their Minneapolis home. They later bought her a $40 Walkman on eBay that is more than 30 years old.

“It makes me smile whenever I see it because it just takes me back to when I was a kid,” said Clark, who used to record Casey Kasem’s top 40 hits show as a child by hold- ing up a tape recorder to a ra- dio. Her expertise came in handy when the ribbon of her daughter’s cassette slipped out. “She had no idea if she had ruined the thing or not,” said Clark, who showed her daughter how to wind it back using a finger. “I told her we used to use a pencil to do this.”

Cassettes started going extinct in the ’90s as people switched to CDs and then
eventually streaming. Even Lou Ottens, who led a team that invented the cassette, thought people should move on. “People prefer a worse quality of sound out of nostalgia,” he said in the 2016 documentary “Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape.”

But in the digital era, fans have been returning to—or, in many cases, discovering for the first time—the physical music of their favorite artists. In 2022, vinyl surpassed CD sales for the first time since
1987. Cassette sales are creeping up, too.

More than 430,000 cassettes were sold in the U.S. last year, about five times the number bought nearly a de- cade ago, according to data tracker Luminate.
Two albums by the 34-year- old Swift, who wasn’t alive when the first Walkman hit stores, were among the 10 bestselling cassettes last year: the re-recordings of “1989” and “Speak Now.” Also on the list: “Punisher” by 29-year-old indie rocker Phoebe Bridgers and the soundtrack for the “Barbie” movie, whose cassettes were sold in two colors:
hot pink and ocean blue.

This year, popstars Charli XCX, Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande all released their new albums on tape.
“It’s a cash cow now,” says Jen Long, who used to run a cassette label and now man- ages musicians in London. “It’s another format to get you up the charts and milk money from people.”
Long, a former BBC Radio one presenter, helped found Cassette Store Day in 2013 as a way to boost sales of tapes. But she said her passion for them has waned.
“I feel bad for the amount of plastic we had to put out into the world,” Long said. She’s kept some of her old cassettes but mostly streams music now, and sometimes plays a record. “Tapes get played fairly rarely these days,” she said.

Fans of cassettes say they are easier to carry around and cost less than vinyl records. Charli XCX’s “Brat” album, for example, cost $15 on tape. The vinyl version sells for $28.

Andy Gutierrez, a 26-year- old in Edinburg, Texas, got into cassettes when he drove an early 2000s Mazda Tribute that still used the ancient technology. After upgrading his car, Gutierrez bought a vintage tape deck for his home and a portable Sanyo cassette player for when he was on the go. The Sanyo recently attracted some retirees at a beach, who stopped to say they hadn’t seen one in a while. They also questioned whether he knew how to use it.“OK, calm down, it’s not difficult,” he remembers thinking, “you just put it in and press play.”

 

It’s interesting how Gen Z is rediscovering old formats like cassettes and enjoying the nostalgic vibe, even with the inconvenience compared to streaming. The same retro trend is visible in digital culture too—many people are recreating simple, bold aesthetics inspired by modern pop releases like Charli XCX’s Brat. Tools like a brat generator let users quickly create similar minimalist text visuals for memes, posts, or edits. If you like experimenting with that style, you can check this tool.

 

I wonder if gen-z is just as fed up with harsh speakerphone masterings as gen x and loves them a misaligned tape head to tame the high frequencies

 

Not to mention that ..well it looks like...kids can super quickly differentiate generated music from the "real".

I´ve seen some Gen Z producer discovering VHS tape and "bouncing" every track to VHS and mixing it afterwards.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&channel=entpr&q=reddit+mixing+on+vhs+tape

 

There's NO idiotic drm with cassettes or vinyl, which is probably the biggest factor in spurning a resurgence. Buy 'em, spread 'em, do what you want with 'em. They are yours not some dickhead corporations. Cassette audio quality might even actually be better if they are loading the cassettes with decent modern tape formulations better than the original shitty iron oxide garbage they loaded them with back in the day.

 

Let's call it for what it is: exclusivity. Which is not bad when you're a kid, or rather almost inevitable.

 

This "Gen Z," consisting mainly of lymphatic and depressed mollusks who are in a love affair with their smartphones, would do well to discover WHICH MUSIC we listened to in the '80s, '90s (and especially the '70s).
Maybe then, these idiots would realize that back in the day, the success of their idols like Taylor Swift would have—thankfully—been limited to their village's fair.

 

Last edited: Mar 16, 2026 at 3:03 AM

cassette

 

Remember folks, this guy votes.

 

Ah yes, the classic "all music sucks except for the stuff I listened to from a particular moment in time".

 

Cassettes are awesome. My first recording medium, and I still use my Portastudio today. Im just hoping this trend doesn't make it harder for me to find old walkmen at the swap meet. I need them!!

 

My cassette is permanently connected to my Mackies in outs, its the best and easiest way to take, er takes, swiftly on the fly, even without the PC being on, what's not to luv.

I dont mind the 'degraded' sound as it can often bring something useful, special or just different to a track.