Death of the audio tape
p2pnet.net news:- Audio cassette tapes used to be THE mode for sneaker nets. They were the way people shared music with each other in much the same way they now use the Net and p2p applications.
Mixes made by recording songs from the radio, vinyl records or from other tapes were also free advertising for the record companies, and free promos for the bands. These days, think mp3s.
There were 83 million music cassettes sold in 1989, “but by 2006 it was down to 100,000, excluding audio books and blank tapes,” says the BBC. But an estimated 500 million are still around in the UK alone but their death knell has been sounded.
Currys, one of Britain’s principal outlets, is discontinuing their sale.
So what to do with all those tapes?
It’s no big deal to jack your audio player into line-in on your computer and, “Fans of a certain internet auction site often claim you can flog just about anything if the price is right… cassette tapes included,” says the Beeb, also pointing out the price they fetch aren’t likely to get the Big 4, Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, all hot and bothered.
“Vintage clothing designer Chandra Sweet, based in Seattle in the US, uses blank audio cassettes to accessorise belts which she sells online or at craft fairs,” says the story, and, “Another designer, Marcella Foschi, breaks cassette tapes and joins them back together using zippers to make a wallet.”
Not only but also, sites such as freecycle.org service a network of people for free.
Meanwhile, who said audio tapes are dead?
Be the only one on your block to have an music player that’ll work with ANYthing, no matter who made it ;P
Also See:
BBC – 10 uses for audio cassettes, May 9, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by governBryan Adams slams Net radio hikement restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 10th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Many, many people opt to spend several hundreds of dollars on expensive car audio CD changers. I elected not to do so even though I have nearly the same sound quality from my setup. What I did was use the stock cassete based system, a car audio cassette adapter from Radio Shack for about $22, a cheap RCA MP3 player ($60), and a 2 Gig memory card ($40). In total, I spent about $122 for the same amount of music capacity and quality. In addition, I don’t have to worry about my CD’s getting heat damaged, scratched, or stolen. It’s a great setup with more features for less money.
May 16th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
1. “OUtless discontinuing sales”: irrelevant.
2. “Who SAID cassette Tapes are dead?” Nobody except you. The fact is, formats do not “replace” one another — except in the minds of ignorant, passive, consumerist sheep (which is pretty much what most of us have been trained to become.)
For example, I’ve been taking advantage for about fifteen years, of the fact that most of the aforementioned Consumerist Sheep have been trained to the ‘death of vinyl” (in that I have, at present, amassed a collection upwards of 7500 albums (33, 45, 78, AND soon CYLENDAR, hopefully!) — a tresure-trove of content, most of which will most likely never be re-released on another format. It runs the gamut from big-band hits of the 1940s to Chechoslovakian chamber orchestra…..all procured at rediculously low prices due to the fact that the morons were led to the (erroneous) conclusion that they were somehow “obsolete”.
(Same reason I have a 500 Mhz Dell system up in the back bedroom for my wife which I found — IN WORKING CONDITION, no less — just ditched in an alley. Stupid sheep.
3. The “emoticon” phenomenon IS actually obsolete — especially that goddamn “;p” one. Emoticons are not “3l33t”, nor are they “kewl.”
September 7th, 2007 at 5:12 am
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