Ape for tapes Analogue audio format the latest to undergo a digital-age revival By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 27, 2025

Swifties are going to want to familiarize themselves with a rewind button.

Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, comes out on Oct. 3. In addition to vinyl and compact disc versions, the American singer’s 12th studio release will also be available as an audio cassette, a once-popular music format that largely fell out of favour, but has lately been enjoying a bit of a rebirth.

Introduced in 1963, two-sided cassette tapes reached their zenith in the mid-1980s, when they began outselling their vinyl counterparts. In 1990, close to 500 million pre-recorded music cassettes were sold in North America alone. Compact discs and later, MP3 players, sounded their death knell. By 2010, annual sales had dwindled to 30,000.

Just when it seemed as if consumers would be hitting “eject” permanently, cassette tapes started to stage a comeback. Spurred on by music lovers searching for something more tangible than a file on their device, cassette sales in 2023 in Canada and the U.S. rebounded to almost 500,000. And now that top-40 artists such as Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX are choosing to issue new albums on audio cassette, that number should continue to rise, industry experts predict.

All of that is music to the ears of Charlie Kaplan, owner of Tapehead City, an online store based in Atlantic Beach, N.Y., that has been wholly devoted to new and used cassette tapes since 2014.

There was already a niche demand for cassettes when he founded his enterprise, Kaplan says when reached at work. Interest has steadily increased since then. Today, his worldwide clientele consists of younger listeners who view tapes as a fun, tactile alternative to streaming, hardcore fans on the hunt for anything/everything associated with their favourite artists as well as those in their 50s and 60s who are revisiting the playback format they grew up with.

“While some still play tapes in vintage Walkmans or car decks, others are buying them as collectibles, merch or a way to support artists directly,” Kaplan says.

“With our world becoming more and more focused online, I only see the importance and popularity for cassettes growing.”

Ray Giguere is the owner of Argy’s Records on St. Mary’s Rd. Giguere opened his shop in 1982. He recalls the heyday of audio cassettes, back when seemingly every customer through the door had a tape deck in their vehicle, or a portable cassette player sticking out of their back pocket.

“I can’t remember the exact album by Metallica — maybe it was …And Justice for All — but what I do remember is getting a large shipment on cassette and selling out in a single morning, then getting in touch with my distributor the next day to say, ‘Hey, I need some more.’”

The same as he did in 2023 when Swift’s 2010 album Speak Now was reissued as a limited-edition double-cassette, Giguere will be stocking cassette copies of The Life of a Showgirl, which will arrive in an orange-glitter shell and include an eight-panel foldout with exclusive photos of the Grammy Award winner.

“There’s never been a time when I haven’t had cassettes in the store, both new and used, but there were definitely periods when I was lucky if I sold two a month, mostly to old-schoolers,” he says, showing off a factory-sealed cassette copy of Barn by Neil Young and Crazy Horse from 2021, and another, AC/DC’s 1980 classic Back in Black, which was re-released on cassette in 2018 for Record Store Day.

“These days, though, I’m getting all these young kids who’ve been given a parent’s tape deck or boom box, and are looking for tapes to play on it. Every time I post pictures of cassettes on my social media, I get a bunch of likes.”

There was a reason Cavin Borody chose to include the word “tape” in his business name, when he opened the Winnipeg Record and Tape Co. in June 2013, at 1079 Wellington Ave.

Previously he’d been peddling records and cassettes online under the banner Motor City North. After noticing that few, if any, music stores in the city were carrying cassette tapes 12 years ago, he thought why not make it abundantly clear that his store fully intended to.

Funnily enough, Borody wasn’t big on the format back when he was a youth catching a bus downtown on Saturday mornings, to shop at Portage Avenue record shops such as Kelly’s and Mother’s.

“I wasn’t a fan of the commercial ones, at all. I much preferred to make mix tapes from my own albums, and I still have about 15 suitcases full of all the mix tapes I put together 40 years ago,” he says.

Borody, who keeps hundreds of cassettes priced between $1 and $10 on a clear, spinning case he scooped up from Eaton’s when it closed, feels the nostalgia factor is responsible for cassettes’ renewed popularity.

“It’s a lot like when records started kicking in with younger kids about 10 years ago, after they saw the hot guy in a movie throw on an album for his girlfriend,” he says.

“With cassettes, I don’t think it has anything to do with sound quality because if we’re being honest, hiss is still a problem. It’s more a case of everything old is new again, especially with kids in their late teens or early 20s, who are out for something different and cool-looking.”

That said, Borody isn’t convinced those interested in a cassette copy of the new Swift album will be buying it for its intended purpose.

“To a lot of them it’s more merchandise. They already have the Taylor Swift beret, the Taylor Swift toothbrush and now they’ll have the Taylor Swift cassette. It’s just another piece for the shrine.”

Unlike Borody, Peter Dul, owner of Duly Records at 557 Portage Ave., bought more than his fair share of pre-recorded cassettes in the 1980s and ’90s, especially ones associated with the so-called “Madchester” scene, when bands from Manchester, England, rose to prominence.

“Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Ride…” Dul says, listing groups he was drawn to. “At the time, vinyl albums were being phased out in favour of CDs, but because CDs were so expensive when they first came out — around $25 each — it made more sense, economically, to pick up a cassette for $6 or $7.”

Dul stores an impressive inventory of cassettes — from A(BBA) to Z(Z Top) — near the back of his store. Punk and hip-hop are the most sought-after genres, especially with students who wander in from the nearby University of Winnipeg, but he also sells “a ton” of classic rock.

“I’ll get the guy who’s heavy into Whitesnake or Rush, only he already owns all their albums on vinyl and CD. To him, a cassette copy of Slide It In or Hemispheres is a novelty.”

If you’re asking Dul, listening to music on cassette is a more rewarding experience than flipping through a playlist on a phone. Sure, you can always fast-forward tracks you aren’t keen on, except it’s usually a headache to figure out where one song ends and the next one begins, so you’re better off playing the album in its entirety, he says.

“Plus, they look great on the wall, with the spine showing,” he continues. “And like albums, you still get the thrill of the liner notes, when you unfold the J-card to follow along with the lyrics or whatever.”

Borody has a word of caution for those who are just getting into the format: always examine an audio cassette closely to ensure there’s no slack in the tape, before pressing play.

“With used ones especially, you have no idea how many Winnipeg winters they were subjected to,” he says with a chuckle.

“Many was the time I put one in before my car had warmed up properly and all I heard was (makes sound of a tape playing at super-slow speed). Then I’d be have to yank it out and try to rewind it manually with the tip of a pencil, which is 100 per cent a lost art.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca