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Tomorrow on Cassette

by Benjamin Duester

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Cassette culture beyond the revival story

$139.77 USD
$139.77 USD $139.77 USD

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Cassette culture beyond the revival story

Benjamin Duester examines cassette culture as an ongoing practice within DIY music scenes, not simply a by-product of renewed interest in vinyl. Interviews with 85 participants—including musicians, independent shop operators, promoters, fans and collectors in Japan, Australia and the United States—ground an account of how tapes function as hybrid music objects in a digital-era landscape. The book connects their continued use to cultural, economic and material factors, with particular attention to cassettes as tools for creative expression and social connection. Its subject is both a format and the communities that keep working with it.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in DIY music cultures, including punk, noise and hip-hop scenes.
  • Those studying music formats, recording and reproduction, or cassette collecting.
  • Readers interested in the cultural and social dimensions of music objects.

Themes

Cassette cultureDIY music scenesMusic formats and materialityCreative expression and social connection

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Growing sales numbers for cassette tapes in the Global North since the early 2010s have led mass media outlets to repeatedly proclaim a tape revival.

Yet, the grassroots projects of devotees in niche punk, noise and hip-hop DIY music scenes have continuously upheld the unique material benefits of cassettes while wider society considered them a relic of bygone times. Contrasting the popular notion of current cassette use being a mere side effect of the blazing interest in the vinyl record, this book argues that the lasting embrace of tapes is based on complex cultural, economic and material factors that shape cassettes as hybrid artefacts of music in the new media age.

Drawing on interviews with 85 experts active in DIY music cultures as independent record shop operators, musicians, event promoters, fans and collectors across Japan, Australia and the United States, Tomorrow on Cassette presents a seminal exploration of how the cassette tape's significance as a tool for material expression, creativity and sociality perseveres in the 21st-century.

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