I did the same, recording the odd music programme. Though I did become an immense music buyer. Home taping hardly killed music.

The only reason home taping didn't kill music was because it was too time-consuming and expensive to do on a large scale. I'm sure we all had the odd cassette or two of albums our friends had taped for us, but doing much more simply took too long. In the mid-80s I sold most of my records in order to buy a synthesiser. I was going to tape them all first until I worked out how much the cassettes would cost me and how long it would take to do. In the end I compromised by keeping the records I really couldn't do without, and selling all the others without taping them first.

If it hadn't been for the compact cassette, I might not still be making music today. The cassette scene of the late 70s and early 80s was instrumental in getting the first two bands I played with noticed. Anyone could get a copy of our recordings by sending us a blank C60 and a SAE. We would then fill the tape with our recordings, add a photocopied sleeve (which cost us 5p each) and return the tape. There was a whole semi-underground scene going which has recently begun to be documented and re-released by Hyped To Death Records.

The compact cassette was also the backbone of my various home recording systems until I could afford a good enough computer to go hard disc digital in 2000. I still have the Tascam 238 machine that allowed me to squeeze 8 tracks onto a chrome compact cassette and was used to record the first music I put out on CD in 1997. Most of my cassettes were TDK SAX60s which allowed 15 minutes of recording (using the whole width of the tape in a single direction and running at twice the normal compact cassette speed).

I still have several unopened "Thats" and Mitsubishi compact cassettes - most likely abandoned when I bought my first CD writer and Toast/Jam for distributing demo recordings.

The compact cassette is making a bit of a retro comeback at the moment. My cousin's oldest son is in a band that's about to release their first album on cassette only. My band have been toying with the idea of putting out a live "bootleg" on cassette.

BTW I only scored 5/10 because most of the cassettes I was using were far more esoteric than the ones in the quiz.

4/10. Not bad for something I used over 30 years ago

I think tapes had a pirate tax on them, same as blank audio CDs. Quite how the cash is distributed I don't know.

Probably all to labels, none to artists if I know how the industry works.


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AFAIK it was considered but never implemented.

As someone whose cassettes were nearly all used for recording their own music I would have been campaigning to get back every penny of any such "tax".

So you didn’t use MiniDisc then? I know a couple of musicians who still use those as they like the way they work (pretty much like cassette, but with digital quality). Mind you, MD is clearly on the wane now anyway.

I remember sending a C60 to someone in a band who sent me a recording back, complete with photocopied sleeve. I still have it somewhere. If I find it, I’ll certainly be adding it to my iPod.

I only ever knew one person with a mini-disk.
With such a low uptake I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did.

I used to have one (still may do in a cupboard somewhere) and I believe Churchmouse, once of this parish, used to use them for recording... something or other. They were actually pretty decent but were pretty quickly overtaken by 'solid state' tech (i.e. MP3 players).

It was more useful to professional musicians.

PS I still have one. I stopped using it when I got a iPod.

From a musician's PoV the best formats to distribute your music on are ones that the majority of your audience owns. MiniDisc take-up in this country was never large enough to warrant using it as a distribution method. I might have bought a MiniDisc recorder on my first visit to Japan where they were cheap and ubiquitous, but by then I already owned a CD writer (1x speed!). For musicians the main use of MiniDisc was a method of playing pre-recorded backings for live performances - there were several companies producing rack-mounted units with anti-shock mechanisms, but even these now seem to have been most replaced with iPods and other devices with no moving parts that are more suited to hostile gigging environments.

If your cassette album dates from the late 70s/early 80s there's a good chance that it might already have been re-released by Hyped To Death (link in my first post). Can you remember what the band was called?

The band was called Captain Apricot and the Electric Jungle Mixers - a student band who were from Dublin. I know one of them through my postal gaming days. I had a quick search on Hyped to Death, and they didn't turn up.

My guitar teacher uses MDs - he has a gig-proof unit and I think it's used for backing tracks at times. It's a more robust format than HD based MP3 players, but SSD units are obviously more robust than those.

I bought a minidisc. In my longstanding hatred for Apple, I didn't buy an iPod when they first came out. In hindsight, I hated the minidisc system because of the proprietary way in which it would transfer music to avoid piracy.