Rewind for revival of music on cassette
Cassette manufacturers are struggling to get their hands on sufficient quantities of magnetic tape as the music format enjoys an unexpected comeback.
Artists including Coldplay, Robbie Williams and Liam Payne are releasing albums on the items that many thought had been consigned to history.
Music industry body The BPI predicts fans, including many under 25, will buy 100,000 tapes in 2019, which will double 2018’s figure.
The last time that number was achieved was 2004.
Karen Emanuel, chief executive of Manchesterbased Key Production Group, which makes cassettes as well as vinyl and CDS, said UK factories she worked with had been “scrambling” to find supplies of tape this year when orders started rolling in.
She added cassettes were also attractive to bands starting out as they were cheaper than CDS and could be produced in smaller production runs than vinyl. The format’s heyday was in 1989, the era of the Sony Walkman, when the music industry shifted 83 million cassettes.
The hit film Guardians of the Galaxy is credited with starting the tape renaissance after marketers released the soundtrack on a tape that looked like the one featured in the film.
Photographer Robert Freeman, who helped define the image of The Beatles with some of the band’s best-known album covers, has died at the age of 82. A statement on the group’s website announced Freeman’s death on Friday, but gave no cause. The former photojournalist shot the black-and-white cover for the 1963 album With The Beatles, picturing the Fab Four’s faces in part-shadow. He also photographed the covers of Beatles For Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul.
Sir Paul Mccartney said Freeman was “imaginative and a true original thinker”, adding that he “came up with some of our most iconic album covers”.