they've been half a fad for a while, and that's where they should stay. At least vinyl has 12 inches of cool art and at times good sound quality.

Yeah, this is nothing new. Terrible, terrible medium. Good for car rides once, not even good for novelty now.

I still have a double cassette deck plugged into my Kenwood Receiver. A good one mind, this baby has Dolby S Noise Reduction™ whatever that means. I also have a Sony Mini-Disc Head Unit on the same Receiver... I am ready for all the new trends baby! Bring it !

This reminds of the Obner report from Brooklyn -- maybe? -- of a twenty something hipster type (un)ironically rocking a Discman in 2009.

Clive Tanaka y su Orquesta did that hipster tape release thing last year thing.

I remember saving eaten tapes by breaking the case apart and putting the reels in a new case or splicing out the crumpled bits. I gotta say it was kinda fun to see if it would come together[esp. for a rare tape] but still it sucked having to do it.

Burger Records does most of their releases on cassette.

There's a jackass here in town w/ a radio show on one of the indie stations where he only plays new music released on cassettes. I've thus far resisted the urge to firebomb the studio, but each day is a challenge.

what does this have to do with me? we should re-release our albums on cassette? if so sign me up

is Shrimper going to be huge yet?

weren't washed out and toro y moi early releases on tape?

There have been DIY artists releasing stuff on cassette all along, but yeah, it seems like an oncoming trend. Just received an email trying to sell tapes today:

My Pete Yorn fandom began with a free "For Nancy ('Cos It Already Is)" cassingle I picked up after seeing him open for Sunny Day Real Estate.

That's all I gots.

I still have a couple of cases full of old cassettes.
Some pretty good stuff in there, too: Faith No More and a couple of cool old local bands among it all.

For some reason I thought you were a Dinosaur Jr. fan.

There's some app that let's you play mixes and it makes your phone/iPod lok like a cassette player.

I think it's for mothers from the 80s in their fly minivans with their fake designer glasses, but that means on the Venn diagram of styles, hipsters overlap. And, Lou Barlow.

Nothing new to add to this discussion. Artists have been releasing cassettes for years. I dig the hand-painted/DIY ones. Methinks these Dino Jr ones will look exactly like the ones released back in the day (that I still have a version of Without A Sound on cassette).

I think you meant Andyfest.

I grab cassettes now and then for a few reasons. One, it's just fun and something a bit different, probably some nostalgia. Second, I really appreciate some of the work people put into packaging the things. Mostly I see them as more or less boutique items, hand painted cases and such, small runs, completely impractical and art objects as much as actual music media. The guy who decided to record atonal noise music over some Deep Purple Greatest Hits cassettes (black shells on the cassettes and his band name and titles written unintelligibly in black marker over that and leaving snippets of Deep Purple between songs) and then just wrap them in aluminum foil to sell made me chuckle. Fun stuff like that for a few bucks (think that one was a whole $3) is worth it for shits and grins. Finally, I just feel I have to support the idiot that thinks to himself...."hmmmm, I"m making music and I want to get my music out there to the people...how should I do this? I Know! I'll copy about 50 cassettes, hand paint the cases and sell them for $5 a pop. That's surely my ticket to fame fortune and women!" That kinda nuts appeals to me and I support it completely.

And the sound is not the absolute best quality in the format, but if you have a good quality deck, which can be found dirt cheap nowadays, and the tape is well-recorded, the sound is a lot better than some seem to be insinuating. I have come across a couple cassette releases that are actually really good sounding and I'm fairly picky when paying attention to that sort of thing. Also, the inconvenience of fast forwarding or rewinding a tape to get to certain songs tends to force you to listen from start to finish which is nice in this day and age where it is so common for everyone to be constantly switching from this to that instantly.

Also, something about grabbing a stack of vinyl and making a mix tape will always and forever be more fun than making CD mixes. And the few people I know with cassette decks love to get these. They're just more personal and the whole process is more enjoyable and interactive.

Somebody should now probably mention those little 3" mini CDs now too.

I got rid of my cassette collection a few years ago, aside from a few items I knew couldn't be easily replaced in any other format.

The fact that it's coming back doesn't bother me. It would be like being annoyed that the Thundercats cartoon is back.

The bottom line on a lot of this is that it's super cheap to make them. Still, I think "limited edition" cassettes are silly, as they're about the easiest format to reproduce.

I got pretty nerdy at being able to cue up without depressing the play button for gaps, but, I'd still rather make a comp cassette from vinyl or cd than tape to tape any day.

I should add I have not heard a cassette tape except for maybe 12 years ago of a recording of an old gig.

I love cassettes...I use one as my logo, I'm getting one tattooed on my arm, I bought a bunch in bulk and still give out mix tapes.