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Cassette Sales Grew By 74% In 2016

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While plenty of attention is paid to the fact that vinyl sales continue to rise year after year, wax records are not the only physical format of music sold that is experiencing an implausible and unexpected revival.

According to Billboard, cassette sales rose a whopping 74% in 2016. That percentage means that the growth of tapes is rising at a faster rate than any other medium in music, though that’s not to say the actual number of cassettes sold comes anywhere near to those categories still losing ground.

Data from Nielsen states that the rise in sales of cassettes still only amounted to a total of 129,000 tapes being sold in the U.S. last year, which is but a tiny fraction of any other format. To compare, there were just over 13 million vinyl records and 200 million albums (combining CDs, vinyl, digital units and, of course, cassettes) sold in the same time period. To further put the 129,000 figure into perspective, that’s about how many copies an album needs to shift in a single week to hit No. 1 during a busy month in the U.S.

While cassettes will probably never return to the important place in pop culture they once occupied, there is clearly an interest in the throwback way of listening, and some fans are willing to spend money on them. Twenty-five different albums sold at least 1,000 copies in cassette form last year, which is up from just eight in 2015. The bestselling musical tape of 2016 was, surprisingly, the soundtrack to the film Guardians Of The Galaxy, which moved 4,000 copies.

Like vinyl, cassettes never fully went away, though they did decrease in popularity to the point where they seemed to be extinct. National Audio Company, one of the few firms left in business that still makes cassettes, claims that in 2014, it produced 10 million tapes, and that number grew by more than 30% the following year and was set to climb even higher in 2016.

As is the case with vinyl, sales of cassette tapes will likely continue to go up over the next few years. While the resurgence is already being shrugged off as something of a novelty, it is important to note that many, even power players in the music industry, didn't think much of the comeback of vinyl when it first began, and that has grown larger than anybody could have anticipated. Will cassettes become the next vinyl in terms of sales and revenue? Perhaps not, but the fact that anybody is still producing—and consuming—tapes in this day and age is almost unbelievable.

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