UK Cassette Sales Up 103 Percent

Illustration (Unsplash)

JAKARTA - During the first six months of 2020, around 65,000 music cassettes were sold in the UK. This means that this figure has increased by 103 percent from the same period last year.

Furthermore, the Official Charts Company said this figure was more than the sales for 2018.

The tapes averaged around £ 10 ($ 13), compared to £ 15 for vinyl.

Lady Gaga has sold 12,000 tapes of her latest studio album, Chromatica since its release in May 2020. The triple-cassette edition of the album sells for £ 23.99 (US $ 30) online - but each set consists of three counts as three sales in the chart.

Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer sold 12,000 cassette versions of their newest album, Calm, in its first week of release. This album offers five different product variations.

The actual number of cassette sales is still lower than the biggest stream of 2019 - Lewis Capaldi's Someone You Loved, which was streamed 228 million times.

Gennaro Castaldo of BPI (British Phonographic Industry) said cassette sales represented a "fraction" of overall UK music sales despite predictions that the figure could surpass 100,000 this year, for the first time since 2003.

"Core fans aside, younger consumers are now buying what they appeal to - as they do with vinyl - and the more they do this, the greater the demand for labels and artists to meet," he said.

Memorabilia

Music analyst Mark Mulligan of Midia Research said the cassette is unlikely to come close to vinyl in terms of popularity.

"Cassettes have always been an inferior product in terms of audio quality," he said.

"The same thing that cassettes and vinyl have, they're memorabilia. It's almost like a gaping hole in the modern music business. Instead of sitting on display on your shelves, your music is sitting mortally on a cloud somewhere," Mulligan continued.

Countries such as Japan, Korea and China cater more to music fans in terms of the goods they offer, he added.

"TenCent (the Chinese tech giant) generates more than twice as much revenue from its music products than it does from streaming," he said.

What about cassette sales in Indonesia? So far there is no official data showing the chart sales of the tapes.

In fact, there are still many cassette lovers and hunters in the country. However, most of the cassettes purchased are old albums which have become the soundtracks of life for music lovers.