爱听音乐的大有人在，但大家都是怎么听音乐的？当下，在线播放可能是最流行的收听方式，但与此同时，一些怀旧科技却重新流行了起来。

 

How do you consume your music? What format¹ do you listen to it on? Technology now allows us to stream and download our favourite songs through websites and apps. This means it's easy to access and it's very portable, so we could enjoy it whenever and wherever we like. So, it's surprising to know that the popularity of some old tech is increasing.

 

A number of musicians have been releasing their albums on vinyl and cassette tape. While this latter analogue² technology lacks the good digital audio quality that we expect to hear today, in its heyday³, it was a popular way for teenagers to enjoy recorded music. The introduction of the Walkman portable cassette player in 1979, made by Sony, meant people could listen to music on the move for the first time. By the end of 1989, 83 million tapes were bought by British music fans, but the invention of the compact disc in the 1990s changed that.

 

Despite the demise⁴ of the cassette tape in the 90s, in the first six months of 2020, nearly 65,000 music cassettes were sold in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company – double the sales from the same period the previous year. Although this is only a small fraction of overall music sales, cassette tapes are physical items that can be kept and collected ­­­– not stored in the cloud. And the resurgence⁵ of the cassette has been helped by big names such as Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, who have released their music on this format.

 

To listen to music on a cassette, you need a tape player or a personal stereo to play them on, but this hasn't deterred⁶ the new younger audience ­– its recent popularity seems to be more about buying memorabilia. Gennaro Castaldo from the British Phonographic Industry told the BBC: "Younger consumers are now buying into their collectible appeal – as they have done with vinyl ­– and the more they do this, the greater the demand for labels and artists to cater⁷ to." But although cassettes won't replace streaming as a way of listening to music, it does go to show how some tech never dies!

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