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Kiss FM: Cine Rock
Cine Kiss, the rock in cinema.
From Monday to Friday in three daily insertions.
Cassette tapes at play in advertisement—is so played out already. But Kiss FM’s funny print ads sure made it clear there’s always room more for waxing nostalgic.
Nostalgia, it has its place now. Long the favorite in music, the cassette tape has undoubtedly run its course. I never thought the day would come when I had to choose between ditching my boxes of tapes, selling them on eBay or digitizing them.
To date, it has been four decades since the first compact cassette, or cassette tape, was patented by Philips. In the 1980s, cassettes took well over half of all worldwide music sales. At some point, 900 million tapes were sold annually. Portable tape players had as maddening sales; in 1994, 18 million were sold.
Where once was the dominion of vinyl and reel-to-reel tape recorders, the cassette held court. Humankind particularly raved about its easy ability to record voice and sound. To make a compilation of songs, or “mix tapes,” for loved ones even became a cultural pastime. Of course, that is to say nothing of just being able to rewind, forward, and pause a cassette.
Regrettably, cassette tapes can melt easily in high heat. Worse, cassette playback can sound hissy over time. For this and other reasons, multitudes started passing on the tape in favor of the Compact Disc (CD).
Today, no current album in the US Top 10 is available in cassette format, according to Billboard. Moreover, the Recording Industry Association of America says only 400,000 cassettes were sold in 2007.
Still, not everyone is abandoning ship. Like me, many people could hesitate on parting with their library of tapes. Thankfully, Amazon still sells various kinds of tape players, although only 480,000 were sold in 2007, according to the US Consumer Electronics Association.
Cassette tapes may have fled from music stores but they’re lingering on in bookshops. For as long as there are blind people who can hear, publishers have released audio books; a significant number are in cassette form. According to the Audio Publishers Association, seven percent of audio books sold in 2006 were cassettes.
Sure there are disenchanted publishers—Macmillan, Random House and Hachette have cut production of cassettes. But the CD has yet to floor the cassette in sheer convenience. It’s still unmatched among audio book formats, in that listeners can stop it, carry it around, and play it exactly where they left off. It has its own bookmark, so to speak.
Some countries are slow to realign the paradigm in the first place. According to the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, cassette tapes account for 70% of all music sales in Saudi Arabia. Annually Turkish people buy 88 million tapes, while Indians buy 80 million.
Maybe even the Brazilian DJs of Kiss FM still has a tape or two.
Advertising Agency: Longplay 360, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Creative Director: Fernando Luna
Art Director: Eduardo Basque
Copywriter: Wanderley Doro
Illustrator: Eduardo Gallo
Published: November 2008
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The good news is that it keeps on getting cheaper and easier to digitize one’s cassette tapes to CD or MP3.
For instance, there’s http://www.ReclaimMedia.com , a service you place an order for and then mail your tapes to.
There are also all kinds of do-it-yourself programs and bits of hardware that make it easier to do at home.
I’m obviously biased toward the service model because [disclosure alert] I work for one. Still, though, there are a great many reasons why using a service like Reclaim Media is actually cheaper than doing it at home by yourself. I’ve put together an article about exactly those reasons, and here’s a link to it:
http://reclaimmedia.com/article_at_home.html
Before putting any time or money toward trying to digitize cassettes (or records) at home, give it a look and decide whether any of its arguments apply to you.
Comment by Craig Meyer — 16 December, 2008 @ 4:57 am