WAVERLY, NEB. — The first obituaries for cassette tapes appeared more than 20 years ago, when compact discs hit the market.
Sales of music tapes plummeted from 442 million in 1990 to about 700,000 last year, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America.
Anyone trying to impress a friend with the perfect combination of songs can probably burn a CD or assemble an MP3 playlist in a matter of minutes. They needn't spend hours dubbing the perfect tape as the main character did in the novel and movie "High Fidelity."
But cassette tapes still thrive in specialty markets because of the format's enduring advantages.
Executives with the last cassette maker in North America, Lenco-PMC Inc., say the plastic cases -- invented in 1964 to hold two miniature reels for magnetic tape -- remain popular for at least three uses: audio books for the blind, court recordings and religious messages.
Lenco General Manager Daryl Chapelle predicts the 200-worker plant just outside Nebraska's state capital, Lincoln, will make about 22 million cassettes in each of the next several years.
That's a far cry from the 175 million cassettes Lenco made in 1995 at the height of the business, but Chapelle is confident that demand will remain steady at least through 2009.
"The truth is, new technology does not replace old technology for years," Chapelle said.
Lenco's cassettes include everything but the magnetic tape, which is inserted later by another company. That enables audio duplicating companies to record numerous copies at high speed to save time before loading the tape into cassettes.
Lenco thrived in the cassette tape business by making a better cassette than foreign rivals that made a cheaper product.
"We always had trouble competing on price," Chapelle said. "But typically those cheap imports weren't consistent. The bigger users had to have consistency to run their machines."
One of Lenco's biggest customers today is National Audio Co. in Springfield, Mo., which makes blank and recorded tapes.
National Audio President Steve Stepp said the audiocassette "is still the most versatile, durable, economic recording material ever invented."
The Library of Congress' National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped has relied on cassettes for its audio books since the early 1970s.
"We have found cassettes to be durable," said Jane Caulton, the program's spokeswoman. "They have been cost-efficient. And they have been easy for our customers to use."
