THE JUKEBOX: Tapping in to tapes

Though the number of cassette tape players seems to dwindle each year, musicians and record labels are making an argument for the opposite to happen. In recent years, underground artists and, in some instances, mainstream acts have brought back cassette tape releases.

Locally, the Washington area has seen a rise in the number of labels and artists offering cassette tape recordings for sale. Washington indie-pop trio Black Telephone released its first batch of music in the form of a four-song demo tape in October 2010. The Baltimore-Washington-Montreal-based Fan Death Records, founded by two alums of this university, has released several tapes since its 2008 creation. Fan Death co-founder Sean Gray launched a cassette-only label, 2,632 Tapes, earlier this year.

Popular Washington label Sockets Records, which began as a CD-R label, announced plans for a "Tape Club" series in January, the first release of which saw light on Saturday.

The cassette was even named "Best Medium" in the Washington City Paper's Best of D.C. 2011 issue.

Black Telephone settled on a cassette release after debating the merits of vinyl ("You can't give it all away or you're just basically moving money.") and CDs ("At this point, they're pretty much coasters for lattes or whatever.").

"We had four songs we really liked, and we could just put it online, but we want a tangible thing to go with it," said Rory Carroll, the band's guitarist-vocalist. "It occurred to us that our sound is sort of '90s — we get that comparison — and we all grew up making cassette tapes for girls we liked … and it's also really pretty inexpensive."

The band sells its tape for $3 at concerts and $6 postage paid for U.S. customers over the Internet.

Not unlike its big brother in vinyl, cassettes were once the norm for listeners and artists.

In 1987, about 60 percent of the prerecorded music in the United States was purchased on cassettes, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, officially marking the cassette's reign as music's most popular format.

Even with overall album sales figures — which includes cassettes, CDs, vinyl and digital albums — dropping 13 percent in 2010, vinyl sales increased by 14 percent over 2009, according to a January report by Nielsen SoundScan. In January 2010, Nielsen SoundScan reported that 55 percent of all albums purchased in the 2000s were CDs, 4 percent were digital albums, 3 percent were cassettes and less than 1 percent were vinyl LPs.

"[Vinyl sales] definitely are trending upward, but they still aren't a significant portion of music sales," said Ryan Little, a freelance journalist and Washington City Paper contributor. "So while I would love to champion the return of vinyl as a format, it's still a very niche audience that enjoys it, or uses it. And hopefully that'll still grow as people want to get outside of their iPods now and then."

Compact discs won the format wars by the end of the '90s. Today, tapes are clunky, easily broken and typically not a household item. And in the age of the mp3, tapes are an afterthought for most music consumers. Yet they are making a noticeable comeback, with fans welcoming this new, old way to buy music.

"We have people that dig it," said Justin Shimp, co-owner of Joyful Noise Recordings, which is based in Indianapolis. "We have people all around the world that order every single cassette, regardless of the band. We have a guy in Japan and a guy in the U.K. that buy every single release."

Joyful Noise began in the early 2000s as an outlet for small vinyl and CD releases and only released its first cassette tape in October 2009. The label works with smaller artists such as Jookabox and Child Bite, as well as higher profile acts including of Montreal, Deerhoof and Akron/Family. The bigger bands tend to work on just cassette releases with Joyful Noise, while the artists' main label handles other formats.

"I think mostly it's just, we think it's cool," Shimp said as to why Joyful Noise releases tapes. "We like it. We're not doing it to become this trendsetter; this label that's really known as this cassette label or something like that, because we really don't want to be associated with that. We listen to bands that we think are cool, and we try to show people what we think is cool because we think other people will think it's cool. But really we just want to show an appreciation for something strange and that we love."

Is it a surprise cassette tapes are becoming a more familiar sight in record label catalogues? Many music fans say no, considering the newfound relevance of vinyl records, another format thought to be dead but now seeing a revival. Though cassette albums have still sold more overall than vinyl albums in the last decade, many vendors are using cassettes as a statement to stand out.

Little has heard multiple arguments for cassettes — some say the format's unruly nature benefits listening habits. Because it is more difficult to skip between specific tracks on cassettes compared to digital players, the listener is forced to engage in the process of setting up the music and is encouraged to listen to the whole tape.

"There's another element that I don't think anyone would admit to, but you have to wonder how much people simply want to have the exclusivity of the ‘only the cool kids listen to cassettes,'" Little said. "I don't want to accuse any label or band specifically of that — I don't know that anyone is necessarily guilty of that or if that's more of a fan fetishization of it or what — but there's a frustrating element of exclusivity to it that kind of bums me out."

The company that manufactured Black Telephone's demo tape generally deals with foreign language educational tapes and religious audio books, which is the norm, according to Carroll.