I know what you’re thinking: CDs, MP3s, and even Kindle. All more “sophisticated” ways to listen than the poor cassette tape. Not so fast! I’ll grant that as technology evolves, hundreds of usable formats are discarded and left in its wake. But the cassette isn’t there yet. After all, if cassettes are dead, why are publishers still selling them?
The answer is that, for plenty of people, cassettes are still a viable way to listen to the spoken word. People who enjoy audiobooks on cassette realize it’s not about having the most newfangled gizmo (OMG, a touch screen!) … it’s about the experience. It’s about having a narrator deliver an author’s words in a way that’s memorable and unique. It’s about the art form that’s created when prose and performance combine to become more than they could ever be individually.
So who cares how you listen? In today’s world of “must-have” devices, we focus too much on the technology delivering our content instead of on the content itself. So let’s not prematurely bury our sturdy cassettes just yet… let’s celebrate the familiar hiss of a good cassette recording!
And if you just can’t resist the allure of CDs, MP3s, and the like, at least have some fun retiring those old cassette tapes. After all, they’ve given us a lot of good memories. Check out the links below for some creative ways to put your cassettes out to pasture.
http://www.wackyarchives.com/offbeat/the-cassette-tape-skeleton.html
http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/celebrity-art-made-with-cassette-tapes/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/4256/cassette-tape-closet-by-patrick-schuur.html
July 2, 2009 at 1:47 pm
I really agree with this comment about cassette tapes.
I LOVE cassette tapes and much prefer them to all other formats. I am a heavy reader/listener of audio books and have them on whenever I am driving as well as at home. I only read unabridged books and both rent and buy them. Sometimes I have finished an audio book and took out the last tape and inserted tape number 1 and started reading it all over again. And I won’t buy a new car because I would have to give up my cassette recorder!
I beseech publishers and recording companies NOT to give up on cassette tapes.
The books I most miss and which is so unfair and unjust as well as undemocratic is not to have President Barak Obama’s books available on cassette tapes as well as unabridged! Honestly! Why should “Dreams From My Father”, a major book by the President of the United States published before he took office so an important and self-revelatory policy-shaper and persona shaper be abridged? And then why isn’t it available on cassette tapes too so as to be available to all persons? It is disheartening.
There are many other books I could name that are available on CD and not on cassettes. Publishers and recording companies are losing sales from loyal and enthusiastic customers like me by not providing books in all formats.
Susan
P.S. I would be willing to pay more for a book on cassette tapes!
July 2, 2009 at 8:39 pm
You haven’t mentioned the main advantage of cassettes – they stay bookmarked forever where you left off, as you take them from car to house to Walkman to wherever. With CD’s your car stereo might keep the place, but once you leave the car, you have to remember what track you were on. And although tapes can tangle, they’re really quite sturdy.
July 3, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Cassetts simply can let you go back and listen to a single sentence over again. Even my new i-pod does not give me that precise amount of control over the material, and going back is time consuming, meaning you have to strop walking (or or driving) and see exactly what you are doing).
I realy do not want to loose the versatility that a cassetts gives simply by touch.
Brilliance audio will convert CD to cassets, for the same purchase prise as their CDs.But they they too are not offering this service for the newer books.
Audible downloads directly to the i-pod which makes ordering CD’s somewhat unnessary altogether.
But gettting back to cassets, seniors need to be able to use formats that work well with arthritic hands and dimming vsion. MP 3 and digital downloads preclude many who grew up on cassetts the world of lterature. That is is a sad loss to the individual.
Yesterday, form another company (Audio Digest), I received the offer for much cheaper MP3 down load, with an even more expensive CD of the material, and almost 40% more costly cassetts. With the CD, I would have had to download it ot my computer, then transfer it to i-tunes and then upload to my i-pod. Or install a new MP 3 down load software. So I decided that at this time all that work was not desired, so stayed with the tapes.
Anyway, tapes are just a lot easier for the older population to use, so it would be a shame if they were discontinued.
July 6, 2009 at 6:45 pm
One of the nicest uses for cassettes is to put a cassette player next to your bed at night and listen, with lovered volume, to a story until you fall asleep. When the tape ends, it turns itself off, a very convenient feature.
I anticipate with regret the day when cassettes are discontinued.
July 7, 2009 at 12:43 am
It is very heartening to hear so much support for those wonderful cassette tapes! Thank you, everybody.
Something that hasn’t been specifically mentioned yet is the value of the off/on and pick up where you left off feature while driving. I listen to cassette tapes in my daily commute which alternates between country roads and complex igh-volume traffic. When I get to certain strategically difficult traffic places on my route and so as not to be distracted, I turn the cassette tape off, and then a minute later turn it back on. I do this constantly, perhaps as many as 10 or 15 times during the course of my daily drive. Therefore, I affirm that the attributes of easy off and on and picking up again in the car is a SAFETY FEATURE for retaining cassette tapes. This easy off and on keeps drivers safe! I know it sounds far-fetched but it is true! Susan
July 7, 2009 at 12:47 am
I have to swim against the current in this lovefest.
There’s a reason CDs have largely replaced cassettes, and it’s the same reason cassettes in their turn replaced 8-track — the CD offers a higher-quality, more durable and compact delivery vehicle for audio.
The sound quality of the cassettes I get from Recorded Books (and from Books on Tape before them) is usually marginal, and I’ve replaced far more broken cassettes than I care to consider. I have to use an elderly portable cassette player to listen to cassette-based Recorded Books in my car; at least I have an auxiliary input in my car stereo, so I don’t have to use a pair of portable speakers as my wife does in her car. “Pain in the butt” only begins to describe it.
From a logistical standpoint, CDs just work better for audiobooks than cassettes — they’re lighter, far more durable, produce much better sound more consistently, and don’t wear out.
I don’t understand why Recorded Books doesn’t remaster its cassette-only books on CD. The recording is already paid for, and cutting CD masters is ridiculously cheap these days. More people might actually rent or buy those titles if they don’t have to deal with an archaic, dying delivery medium.
July 7, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I so prefer cassettes. I can transport the same book from the bedroom to the kitchen or to the car without missing a beat. With CDs, I am always repeating part of the book if I move it from one player to another or I find myself listening to different books from room to room which can get confusing.
July 27, 2009 at 6:46 pm
I love cassettes they are a way to get music at an extraordinarily cheap price, or for free. The local library hosted a gathering where they were giving away all of there old LPs, 45s, Reel to Reels, 8 tracks and cassettes. I went nuts, I made 5 trips and filled up my car each time, loads of good music. I buy a couple of tapes once in a while from half price books for $0.50 ($0.25 for clearance). They sell them for $0.05-$0.10 at the corner thrift store. I currently have amassed 4 full bookshelves of cassettes and am very happy.
August 9, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I am an I.T. professional and an amateur electronic music composer and arranger. I live in digital music and have knowledge and gadgets galore, but for audio books I have to have cassette tapes.
The most important advantage cassettes have over other media types is that they stay put when they’re popped out of whatever player they’re in. I can be listening to my book in the car on the way home from work, move the cassette to my portable walkman when I get to the health club and pick up the story at the same spot for my workout, listen to a little more on the way home from the health club, and hear more of it as I cook supper or wash dishes later.
To do the same with a book on CD I’d have to have a perfect memory or good logging system for track numbers and a CD player that didn’t skip when I jostled it around (I don’t think there is such a thing). And I’d then have to spend time cueing through the current track to find my spot whenever I transferred it.
I’ve been looking for an MP3 player with really good bookmarking and playlist retention, but my research so far has found that the only one that was really practical for audio books went out of production about four years ago. MP3 downloads come in huge chunks, not in small tracks like audio CD’s, and without bookmarking the task of finding my place after using the player for something else would be a real pain.
My library stopped carrying cassette audio books a couple of years ago, and I’ve been building up my own library of them since then, but it’s a slow process because of the greater cost of cassettes. I work long hours and don’t have time to read printed books or even watch mucy TV, but I love stories– good, engaging stories. They keep me sane in a busy world.
I hope Recorded Books keeps offering cassettes indefinitely. I also wish that my library and local bookstores would start offering cassette books again and that I could find a replacement for my cassette Walkman, which still works but lost its belt clip. I have to play it from a waist pack, which looks kind of stupid.
My thanks to Recorded Books for offering the cassette sale. I’ll definitely take advantage of it.
August 9, 2009 at 5:15 pm
The special cassette sale by Recorded Books is indeed much appreciated and I have bought 3. I wish reviewers would mention the availability of audio editions (only unabridged!) in their reviews (just in the listing part) and surely publishers and review media could provide this information. For example, the lead review in today’s New York Times Book Review is the new biography of Teddy Roosevelt by Douglas Brinkley, “The Wilderness Warrior”, which sounds wonderful and which I now long to read. I would love to know that this was available in audio format (AND ON CASSETTES!) and I would have bought it by now. Susan
August 10, 2009 at 2:51 pm
RB is actually in the process of remastering our cassette only books, but pre-digital recordings do take some time. More are coming everyday.