Hi. It’s Mikey The Tape Player here – playing tapes because I don’t have to.
Today we are going to figure out how to start collecting cassette tapes. Where are the best places to begin learning?
I have been looking around the Internet and these are the best blogs, websites, newsletters, and boards I have found for tape collecting, tape players, and cassette nerds. Hopefully, there are some you don’t know about yet and you’ll be all “Oh rad! I didn’t know about this one!”
- Tabs Out. A hilarious podcast that plays tapes of mostly experimental music from dedicated tape labels. Also, reviews submitted tapes.
- Tapehead City. On online tape store, the ultimate spot for buying new releases and hard-to-find tapes.
- Cassette Chronicles. This is a series on a website that looks back at some old albums and the tapes that were released around it.
- Cassette Gods. It’s an old cassette review blog that was thought to be retired, but they did just put up a post wondering if anyone is still around. We are.
- Cassette Comeback. A great website for buying sealed blank tapes and tape players.
- The Cassette Place. A website for buying old tapes.
- National Audio Company. A manufacturer and packager of actual tapes.
- Retospekt. The place to buy portable tape players.
- Cassette. A good community on Reddit.
- Cassette Culture. Another good Reddit community.
- Cassette tapes on eBay. I mean, we have all bought tapes on eBay, yeah?
I will come back to this post and add blogs or sites when I find another one worthy.
Links to Cassette Tape History and Important Collector Posts
I have been trying to learn about what I have been missing out on with tape collecting and the history of it. There has always been a huge nostalgia element for me but I have left it there, previously – not letting myself go down the tape nerd rabbit hole.
But now I am ready to listen deeper and find out more. So, here are some posts that I found to help me and I hope they will help you.
- The Evolution of Cassette Culture – posted on Medium by Jacob Waite.
- Every couple of years there seems to be an article about the resurgence of cassette tapes. Here is a recent one.
- Another tape comeback story, this one talks about how blank Maxwell tapes are still in demand.
- From Wired, how to start a cassette collection in the 21st Century.
Key Videos For Tape Collecting
There is a pretty decent amount of cassette tape related YouTube channels and videos. I am just showing a couple of basic starting out relevant videos – I will do another post with some of the best people to be following.
A positive take on why cassettes right now:
And a more negative? stance:
Okay, hope this helps you start or solidify your tape collecting and enjoying journey. If there are any you think I missed, please feel free to comment on this post with the website I missed.
Soon I will be digging into the E-Bay and Amazon world of collecting tapes and I will rewind and playback my experiences.
For my related reading, check my blank cassette tape post.