Cassette Tapes

When it comes to physical media for small bands, cassettes are a great medium. They about 50 cents for dubbing, and easy to get profits on.

For someone that goes to shows, $5 cassettes are also a lot less risky of a purchase from an unknown band compared to a $20 record. That being said, the extremely low cost also allows a lot of garbage to flourish. After collecting over 200 new tapes, I have gone through many others that are absolute garbage, but it still is way less risky compared to vinyl. Most bands also include digital downloads, have good artwork / printing techniques on the tapes, and they act more as a collectible item. CDs are about the same in cost, but aren't as gimmicky as tapes and harder to distribute / print.

I'm happy tapes are around, sure their resale is absolute shit, but it isn't risky if it is just $3-$5 a pop.

That being said, labels and bands that charge more than $7 a tape are jackasses. I've seen some albums go for $15 on tape, which is ridiculous because it costs about 75 cents to purchase, dub, and print a single tape.

tl;dr tapes are nice, but there is a lot of garbage because they are cheap, but also less risk

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Well said. There's something really enjoyable about tape collecting, I feel like I genuinely enjoy listening to a cassette over a mp3 file, even if the sound quality isn't as good. For lo-fi genres like black metal, I actually really prefer listening on tape.

nibba you can't even get a cassette player in the thrift store anymore

I make cassettes because they are a cute medium to release music on. It fits right in your hand unlike a CD or vinyl stuff.

I got like 50+ copies of a tape my friend and I made 4 or 5 years ago. We broke up a little while after we got the tapes. What's the best way to get rid of them?

I like that they have a higher storage capacity than CD. I can fit my bootleg albums on just one side of a 120 minute cassette.

Hahaha clearly no one in this thread was around to remember having to use the eraser end of a pencil to rewind the tape after it inevitably got jacked up

Hahaha yeah I'd rather just casually stream music and download mp3 files with jacked up names and out of order tracklists

If you have a good tape deck, this will never happen

>bands that charge more than $7 a tape are jackasses
G-good thing I don't do this

Dont forget when it would jam up and crinkle your tape. Casettes and vinyl are fine as secondary and less regularly used mediums, its a bit different when its all youve got.

i only own a few cassettes. most of my collections in CDs (around 2000) and much fewer records.

however, the only cassettes i own are cassette only, or special releases that I have not listened to once.

Yeah, I have over 300 cassettes and ive never listened to them. I tried once and the felt piece under the tape fell off and destroyed the tape deck in my car. Now I just have them all in a box

i feel they have more of a collectability than records, in a way. they look prettier in more situations if you have a medium-sized collection, and records only look good if you have a particularly hefty collection.
also, in a world where everything I own is more and more modern, the only cassette player I have is the same one I had when I was like 8.

LETS FAST FORWARD THIS THREAD

>buying cassettes for releases that weren't from back in the day
>releasing your music in tape form just to be hipster about it

wtf I hate tapes now

what fucking thrift stores are you going to

I got into tapes recently. Got a decent deck, but not nearly enough cassettes in my collection. I am proud of owning this, limited to 30 copies, because I missed the vinyl release three years before.

I mean that's what's selling right now
If I'm able to do CDs/Vinyl down the road and I'm able to get enough of a profit from it then I'd do that but cassettes are what's in right now with the audience that sees live music

welcome to 2007

been hip to do for over a decade now.

This. New Jack babies will never understand

I'm fine with $9 and below desu, anything above $10 is taking the piss. Have started seeing $12-15 tapes on bandcamp more lately and its shit.

I'd like to buy them but I've got nothing to play them with. I'd also like to try recording on them directly from a synth or smth

lower prices and more people will be exposed to your music. More sales

donate probably to local stores, or do a bandcamp release

Where should I buy them in bulk? Trying to put my music out physically.

i saw a good one like yesterday

I rarely see them in regular thrift stores. But pawn shops and refurbishment stores often have some in great condition for a decent price.

>bands that charge more than $7 a tape are jackasses
>about 75 cents to purchase, dub, and print a single tape
>about 50 cents for dubbing, and easy to get profits on
>easy to get profits on
>profits

You have clearly never put a tape out in your entire life. You should start posting things you actually know about, like sucking cock.

what does that even mean

Please elaborate. How much does it actually cost to put out a tape?

You are so woefully uneducated about the reality of what it costs artists and labels to put out a tape it's infuriating. Hoopeared dipshits like you deserve to be strung up on telephone poles and doused in cat urine.

From someone that has sold many tapes, it is easy to make profits.

Your music is just bad.

$25 for 30 blank tapes including cases
$10 for printing of Jcards
$5 for shipping of each tape
$40 total

Sell 8 you break even, sell 30 you make profit. Not all tapes are released through Merge

Alright, so let's say I want to do a run of 50 copies. Now OP might have a point if they were all homebrew, like if I dubbed copies one at a time at home on a dual deck. However that's incredibly time consuming, even at high speed dubbing (which yields shittier quality dubs anyways) and of course time is money. This applies to art as well (j-cards/other inserts, stickers or iy shell graphics, cases if not using standard norelco cases, etc). Consistency is another thing to worry about when doing it yourself, and again time/money plays a part in this aspect as well.

So onto a duplication company. Let's use NAC as an example: reliable, fast, customer service that both exists and isn't worthless (unfortunately a rare novelty in my experience). I want all my copies to have 3-panel j-cards, full color; I want a color shell and imprinted text/graphics on the shell to help it stand out. Type II (CrO2) is thankfully not that expensive anymore so there's no excuse not to upgrade quality. I'm not in a hurry, so let's waive the faster, more expensive shipping.

In this example, the total order will be roughly $200, or $4/tape: hardly the "50 cens to dub durr hurr" figure OP farted out. Now your unit cost will go down if you order more units, thoguh it's not really a noticeable improvement until you get into the 200+ copy range bare minimum AND your total cost goes up AND you now need to move more product, which could mean less profit which leads right into my next point.

To make ANY money off of these, bare minimum, the markup should be 1.6x though preferably 2x of the cost of a single unit, so in this case a single tape on the consumer end would be $6.40 or $8.00 respectively (let's go with $8 since it's a cleaner figure). This cost doesn't include shipping, which if you make the customer pay for it can turn them off from buying a copy, especially if it's not a domestic customer.
(cont.)

I'll skip a few other notes, like what you should charge at shows, wholesale rates for when you want to ump a nig chunk of product off on another label to sell, etc. but my point is this is what an independent has to go through to get a tape done. Bigger names in musicn can get away with pricing things higher not just becuas eof demand, but becuase they know they can take a hit if the tapes don't sell (which they often don't, despite what the hipsters preach) This is true particularly in the metal scene due to the added benefit of the "trve analog kvlt" aspect, but for everyone else tapes are a feast-or-famine, often losing enterprise, ESPECIALLY for independents and even more true for first-time labels who don't know shit about how tapes work on a technical level (I.e.what formula to use, how to set up your home equipment to tell if your copies are decent-sounding, etc.)

OP comes off to me as someone who just discovered tapes throught they were coll, then got insulted that someone had the audacity to want to do more than simy break even on something and had this little baby diatribe to post for all the other millenial shitbags to agree with.

That's IF you can sell 8 of them. And where the fuck are you getting these figures from?

jesus you tryhard

I assume you also are the type of jackass band that seals your tapes too for no fucking reason.

Its a tape, calm down with your Type II CrO2 bullshit. Barely anyone cares about that. Barely anyone cares about the "quality" of the sound since it is a cassette. I like tapes, hell I do my own dubbing of Type IV tapes, but I don't expect anyone to purchase my tapes with that same type of money or care. Also a CrO2 tape ordered on mass will still sound bad because with their equipment, the quality will decrease unless you specify a slower dub speed.

Your method is overly expensive and pointless. Also Duplication.ca > NAC.

If your band can sell over 200 tapes, then why are you here?

Print your own jcards, sit down and dub your own tapes because your band isn't good enough to sell 200 tapes. Take some time and you'll save money.

Tapes lose all the fun if you just have someone else do everything for you and it shows in the release.

selling 8 tapes isn't hard if your band is good :3

also duplication.ca

>this is what an independent has to go through to get a tape done
half of the steps you listed as pointless, tapes and cassetteculture are rooted in DIY methods. Cut some paper, use your home printer for J-Cards, get an old tape deck and sit down with your band mates and make each one by hand. Tapes are actually fun to make and the process you listed is boring

I'm kinda new to the whole casette thing, how exactly do you record onto one?

Go on Craigslist or Goodwill, find a tape deck (they usually run from $5 to $25). Brands to look for are Pioneer, Denon, Akai, Sony, the usual audio brands.

To record on a tape, there are tabs on the top that allow you to record. You can use a piece of sticky tape to make a "fake" tab to reuse old tapes. Plug in whatever audio system you have into the line in, press record on the tape player and there ya go. Set the audio levels correctly. You can recycle old tapes for extremely cheap or you can order new tapes wholesale. You can even hook up many tape players up together to make many tape machines dub at the same time. Basic youtube videos also show this

You're missing the fucking point: my figures are NOT for diy stuff. That image OP posted? I bet dollars to dickholes that was ripped from some duplicator's "look at what we did" webpage, and I can guarantee none of them were done with the methods you're describing:

>self-dubbed tapes
>print own j-cards
>fun to make
>wew lad

I want to make this clear: I like DIY tapes. I agree there's a joy to making your own shit. What I'm arguing here is this method is just that: for the joy of it. The tapes that are going to sell out quick at shows & the like are going to be the more professionally presented ones because they're "cute" and "safe." That's sad but it's the reality. The people who are truly passionate about the DIY oldschool method of tape making are probably not paying anywhere close to $7/tape in the first place, because the people who make these kinds of tapes are probably doing it just for the joy of doing it because they already know it's futile to try to make money off of it.

>tapes that are going to sell out quick at shows & the like are going to be the more professionally presented ones because they're "cute" and "safe."

lol wrong

People buy tapes if the band is good. People buy tapes that look cool. Handmade stuff has a nice charm people like.

Am I arguing with the frontman of fleet foxes?

I'll also go on record to say I wouldn't pay $15 for a tape, unless it was rare or some kind of boxset dealy. In that case, however, it's probably because the person putting out that $15 knows what it's worth and knows what they put into it. The quality of the release justifies the price; if it was a piece of shit release, then it wouldn't matter if it were $15 or 15 cents. My problem with OP is he/she/it's devaluing cassettes without knowing what really goes into them.

>that look cool

DING DING DING and you wonder why lots of these indie punk bands have bright or unusual shell color/case color schemes? To look cool and to SELL because that's something you can't get with dubbing on old stock type I maxell c90s in your bedroom.

>tfw selling cassette with DIY booklets for less than ten bucks

I now feel like I'm underselling myself. But then again, I made them for fun.

Did you make those? What kind of music is it? They look nice, user. :)

Yes. Thanks, user.
It's rhythmic noise / angst pop.

Making DIY cassettes is fun.

Oh man, that sounds like something I'd listen to. Do you have like a site for your music or somewhere I can check it out?

It's all on Bandcamp.

morpheuslunae.bandcamp.com/music

these look pretty

That's their main appeal. I use nothing but old, empty tapes I find on Ebay. Every batch looks different but the sound is not the best it could be. But for that there's the digital stuff. Limited cassette editions are for looking pretty on your shelf.

dem hubless cases tho

I like them that way.

you can get shiny new tapes for 50 cents from online wholesale :3

>to be hip
>not cheap