Death of the cassette = death of the demo?

Cassette prices have tripled in recent years, it seems impossible to find blank tapes for less than €1 a piece. Whilst there are still bands putting out their demos on tape, it seems that they're increasingly being released on 'pro-tape', the factory pressed ones and not made by home dubbing.

Supposing that cassettes do completely die out, what implications would this have for demos? Are they all going to be posted only on the internet, whether its MySpace or some other program in the future? Will CDrs ever become accepted? Will bands go straight into being signed without any prior releases (as they tended to do in the mid- late 90's) leading again to a saturated market with little quality, as the bands have no time to mature and develop their own sound? Will all demos have to be released by labels to recieve the funding?

People wont have the choice and will accept CDr as the new cheap format to spread demos, as tape was back in the old days.

i think demos will become more and more internet-based, be it in whichever way that might be - myspace, downloads/blogspots, or streaming/youtube. it is a shame that tapes are on their way out, but it seems to me that within couple of years most of the old tapes (the ones stuck in used cd stores at 'clearance' prices) will have been recycled, and unless someone pics up on that and starts mass producing custom tapes, corporations (sony, maxell, basf) will stop producing the tapes, and theyll go the way of the 8 track.

christkum wrote:

Cassette prices have tripled in recent years, it seems impossible to find blank tapes for less than €1 a piece. Whilst there are still bands putting out their demos on tape, it seems that they're increasingly being released on 'pro-tape', the factory pressed ones and not made by home dubbing.

You can order white, black, or any other colour "pro" tapes from Uk for less than 1 euro a tape... If you order by 100 it can even be around 0,60-0,70 euros...
(The peoples who sell these coloured tapes can also dub it for you, so it's not easy to make the difference between a pro tape or home dubbed "pro tape", unless there's a special printing on the plastic itself (I'm not talking about a sticker))
So I don't think it's disappearing or dying... It's only available through different sellers... (Forget the local shops.)

the advantages of CDr over tapes are obvious. I like to think CDr's will always be around when it comes to demos, because myspace mp3s sound like shite and youtube's even worse, you can really hear the diffrence in sound quality.

So far my band has only put out cassette demo releases.

Cassettes can be found at thrift stores, on ebay in bulk whoresale prices and at dollar stores.

For how much longer tho, is the good question?

In my place they recently begun reducing the selling of tapes, by stopping first the circulation of 46 and 60 minutes length. Prices were OK, 0,50-0,60 euro. Unfortunately, I begun not accepting covers+master in my trades anymore, because of that. And I'm thinking about all that covers I have gathered... Maybe I should start trading covers from my distro.

I think that with the easy access to recording software these days, demos really are dying. bands just come out and call their first shits an album, or else just the myspace tracks and stuff.

I think the future is grim and is full of a saturated market with little or no quality, yeah. i still think that when you needed more equipment to make a demo, bands were more serious. Now any asshole with a computer can put out ten "albums" a year. This is why I don't listen to much new music anymore.

Secret is, be like CRUCIFIXXX SODOMY, our friends record our live shows on their walkman and then we release it, it works, sounds ok and defintally saves us recording fees!!

yeah, and i still think there will be tape supporters, i just think it's on the decline even more than before.

circleofdestruction wrote:

I think that with the easy access to recording software these days, demos really are dying. bands just come out and call their first shits an album, or else just the myspace tracks and stuff.

I think the future is grim and is full of a saturated market with little or no quality, yeah. i still think that when you needed more equipment to make a demo, bands were more serious. Now any asshole with a computer can put out ten "albums" a year. This is why I don't listen to much new music anymore.

My opinion is that the meaning of albums and demos should be redefined. In the pre-internet days, you practiced in a garage, then when you felt solid enough you did a demo, which you sent to labels in order to get a contract and make an album. Nowadays, thanks to Pro-Tools and Drumkit from Hell, like you said you don't need to put so much effort to have a good quality recording (technically-wise), which blurs out the difference between the demo and the album.If people hardly buy any albums, what hope do you have that a demo will sell? Maybe on a merch table after your live show, but I have no idea who (among the younger crowds, not the old farts like us) has the patience to pick a distro list, send money, and wait for a week till the demo arrives in their letter box. How could they, when they already bitch about how slow Myspace is, eh?

you could get shitload of various tapes (60,74,90,120 minutes) to tape
trade in your zone 15 years
ago, even those black ones from China (Did anybody ever buy/have
them?) and they were really good and cheap. It's
obvious a demo tape kicks the shit out of a Cd-r and not even mentioning Itunes
or other sterile streaming formats like Myspace, etc. CDRs were accepted as a
format, but not its price it's what I see among some acquaintances in Chile.

Probably demos on tapes would be even much
shorter than 10/20 minutes to become "Kvlt" because of expensive
tapes and get some pseudo-Elite status, just like current re-re-re-re-releases
on LP's. You pay for the music/quality not the format. People will be more
demanding and much smarter to release and demand demos from new underground
bands and I think it will be much better for all and there won't be much
changes. Ghetto-blasters, cassette decks ARE REALLY DYING!

Forget the bullshit I wrote about cassettes being obsolete. Cassettes are the coolest thing ever invented. I'm having a hell of a fun right now with cassettes. They're hard to find now though, had to do 4 local stores before finding a 5x90 minutes pack!

Tigi wrote:

Forget the bullshit I wrote about cassettes being obsolete. Cassettes are the coolest thing ever invented. I'm having a hell of a fun right now with cassettes. They're hard to find now though, had to do 4 local stores before finding a 5x90 minutes pack!

What the fuck are you doing with cassettes?

Fucking the capitalists big time

Tigi wrote:

Fucking the capitalists big time

According to the current price of tapes in supermarkets... Maybe you help the capitalists...

Last time I bought cassettes it was still in francs and I don"t remember the price, but it musn't have been much cheaper than 10€, was it?

Tigi wrote:

Last time I bought cassettes it was still in francs and I don"t remember the price, but it musn't have been much cheaper than 10€, was it?

Tapes in super markets almost cost 2 euros for 1.

Are you sure it was cheaper 10 years ago? Seriously, I really can't remember. I've seen cheaper prices (6.50) on the web, but then there's the post charges.

Tigi wrote:

Are you sure it was cheaper 10 years ago? Seriously, I really can't remember. I've seen cheaper prices (6.50) on the web, but then there's the post charges.

5 years ago I could buy the same tapes in the same supermarkets for about 1 euro each! (It was packages of 5 or 10 tapes).

If you buy big tapes packages (50 or 100) in England, you can have quite good prices.

Good to know...

From my point of view, running a distro about quite old styled metal, I don't feel like tapes are dying. Bands in the old school metal genres often prefer to have their music on tape or vynil than cdr or cds.
The amount of tapes you can spread of a given release is really smaller than 5 or 10 years ago, but I wouldn't say it is dying.
Maybe it's not representative of reality because I'm focused on a retro kind of music to distribute. I wouldn't mind releasing more cdr stuffs sometimes, but maybe it's'not too much ''wanted'' anymore in 2013?

I don't think its dying, its just going underground sort of. Everyone is all about the Vinyl it seems. Maybe there will be a resurgence in about a decade or so?

Les cassettes c'est la fête