Why Should I Care About Tape? - Thesis
RECORDING TECHNIQUES:
The introduction of electro-magnetic tape birthed a range of groundbreaking recording and producing techniques that are often, today, considered a standard requirement in any recording studio across the planet even without a reel-to-reel machine present. It’s fair to say that electro-magnetic tape inventor Fritz Pfleumer , enabled and influenced the most accessible method of the recording and production of music for almost a century with no intention of doing so and here’s how:
SPLICING
The ability to reorganise and edit a piece of recorded material to the millisecond was made possible by the discovery of a technique known as splicing. Before the integration of reel-to-reel machines in professional studios in the 50s, bands and solo musicians were expected to deliver their most saleable performance in one take before it was pressed on to vinyl. Of course these takes would have been rehearsed tirelessly beforehand except at the cost of energy, time and money that was then preserved through the commercial integration of reel-to-reel machines in professional studios and eventually as a leisurely recording and listening device in living rooms in the 60s/70s.
Today, the act of splitting an audio region in your DAW (digital audio workstation) whether it be Logic or Ableton etc. is born out of the physical, laborious act of splicing tape. Blade in hand, a producer would locate the very first and last second to be edited, place the tape on a splicing block and run a razor diagonally over the tape. Once a cut is made, the tape is then rejoined at both severed ends using an even smaller sticky tape, connecting the diagonal ends to achieve a ‘seamless’ splice that would ideally go unnoticed in a final release; all with the intention of either re-recording and replacing the cut section or just disposing of it entirely.
Of course, the splice was and is not always seamless when using a physical format like tape that requires both high fidelity listening and surgical precision. However, as a result of engineers developing such a way to edit and reorganise music in real time, most DAWs allow users to locate the zero-crossing and splice right on the exact moment that audio signal ducks and dives through negative and positive at zero decibels. This means that an edit or splice is totally imperceptible to the listener’s ear in today’s digitally dominated world of recording and streaming music.
LOOPING
It’s impossible to know who first thought to join both ends of one cut of electro-magnetic tape and play it back to create an audio loop, however there are many examples of artists using this as a method for composing music and display as sonic art installations.
One of the most notable people who has composed work using tape loops that has stirred important conversations surrounding both sonic and political art is contemporary artist and musician, William Basinski. The effect of creating a tape loop and leaving it running on a reel-to-reel until the music’s melodies become indistinguishable is perfectly exemplified in Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’ which was recorded before September 11th 2000 but later released on CD in response to the tragic destruction of the World Trade Center in New York.
CASSETTE TAPES:
Since their commercial release, cassette tapes pioneered the act of listening to music on the go. Before Sony offered the ‘Walkman’ to the world, cassette tape decks were often found in the homes of those who were most inclined to learn how to actually use them and once cassette decks were incorporated into the standard design for car radio and stereo systems, the way the world consumed music changed forever.
In my lifetime, on-the-go listening has always existed, an almost default way of listening to music as opposed to the sit-down, lounge listening experience. This evolution of how and where we take in music has undoubtedly affected the way music, particularly pop music, is written and structured today. Talk to any music producer with a top streaming track under their belt and they’ll tell you it's all about the first 20-30 seconds, you have to capture the listener quickly or their attention will drift and thus lose interest.
When we take a look back at music that was consumed before the ‘on-the-go’period came, we notice that full concept albums were more desirable for the sit-down listener to enjoy because it meant they didn’t have to get up and flip a single after 4-5 minutes, they could relax and go on a journey taking in the full story. One of the most popular examples of this would be Pink Floyd’s classic album The Dark Side of The Moon which has been highly commended still decades after its release.
It's true that there is a trend of rediscovery in the consumption of music today, many young audiophiles and music enthusiasts take a lot of pride in ‘crate-digging’ and showing off their collection online which then generates a whole new demographic of people enjoying music that was released pre-streaming with many of the more ‘underground’ releases only being available on physical formats.
DISTRIBUTION
It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that for many independent artists distributing their music on cassette is much more appealing than on other platforms and this might be for many reasons, particularly economical, sociological and political. Since their existence, cassette tapes have brought about new communities through specific genres of music from 80s punk to 90s/00s hip-hop where resistance to capitalism, classism and racism within the music industry were key topics of discussion.
Cassettes are extremely simple to record on to if you have the gear and back then, cassette recorders were pretty accessible given their simplistic design, cheap manufacturing and high popularity so anyone could record something on to a cassette from home, duplicate it and distribute it making a record label or distributor much less powerful. As a result, there is a rise of small musicians and bands distributing their releases on cassette today because it is still very easy, very cheap and niche.
ART & DESIGN
Another special attribute of the cassette tape is the artwork that comes with it. Although I didn’t grow up solely listening to music on cassette, I still get a feeling of nostalgia when I open up a cassette and flick through the inlay. It carries a similar feeling when opening up a CD case and checking to see if they had printed the lyrics in there or what the title of track 5 was so you could download it to the family computer and upload it to your MP3 player or iPod.
Now, when looking at cassette tapes in 2026 my personal point of interest if I don’t know the artist is the inlay artwork. To examine the choices that were made from colour, font to images or even lack of any of the three in an inlay is usually very telling about the sonic world that exists on the tape. It allows the artist to provide a context or set a scene before the listener has even loaded the cassette into their Walkman or even better, serve as an underscore to the music in real time.
From a marketing standpoint, an inlay is also particularly powerful. When cassettes were the standard way of buying and listening to new music, the way they were displayed would have been a key contributing factor to sales much the case for any physical listening format. In a similar way that pop music today needs to catch our ears’ attention, the artwork on a physical listening format like vinyl, cassette or CD needed to catch the eye of the potential listener. The value or importance of the visual aspect of a release today with streaming platforms dominating the music industry, could be argued as less vital than ever before. Instead of going into a shop and taking in the ‘inventory’ for your own selection, streaming services have developed a way using AI, to provide listeners with the music they already like making the artwork in some cases, redundant.
Further thoughts:
There is something particularly profound about the creation of tape being as a result of and to facilitate war and destruction when over the course of nearly 100 years continue to be used to make art often emphasising the fragility and mortality of the material itself but more importantly, humankind.
Why should I care about tape?
Because independent artists today are responsible for keeping the art in music alive by using small acts of resistance like distributing on tape as a tool against the corporate organizations that seek to eradicate the tangibility of music completely.