It's nearly the final rewind for the tape cassette.
Once the format of choice for recorded (and recording) music, the mighty cassette has finally met its match in a digital sonic universe filled with alternatives. The cassette is being crowded out of the music market, figuratively and literally.
The attack is coming from all sides. The recordable compact disc, once the purview of professionals, has evolved into an affordable, plug-and-play technology. Tiny digital gadgets stuffed with mini-memory cards download pure CD-quality music off the Internet. Sony continues to market its MiniDisc as the natural replacement for the cassette, and even newer technologies wait just over the next high-tech ridge.
In figures recently released by the Recording Industry Assn. of America, cassette unit shipments last year in the United States dropped 22%, from 158 million in 1998 to 123 million. In dollars, the format's sales decreased from $1.4 billion in 1998 to $1.1 billion in 1999.
The origins of the cassette reach back almost 40 years, to 1963, when engineers from Philips in Europe paired their plastic shell--formally dubbed the compact cassette--with a new, ultra-thin, low-noise tape from a company called BASF.
Originally designed for recording voices, the cassette, which coexisted for a time with the eight-track tape before that inferior system became extinct, was quickly adapted for music, and frequently tweaked and improved through the years, mainly thanks to an audio engineer named Ray Dolby, whose now-standard noise-reduction system eliminates annoying tape hiss.
Philips still includes cassette players--but only in the lower end of its range of audio products. The emphasis now is on the recordable compact disc technology. "A whole generation grew up with cassettes, but now a new generation is being brought up on compact disc," said Andy Mintz, a Philips vice president for its audio division.
And there seems to be little romance attached to the cassette in a bottom-line business like consumer electronics. During a recent line showing that focused on Philips' new CD recorders--including recorders replacing cassette players even in mini-audio systems--company executive Des Power noted how "cassettes are in for a rough time" and said afterward that it's "logical" to expect the cassette to go away eventually.
