When nostalgic movies about the 1990s and the ’00s come out in another decade, cassette tapes may be something for teenagers of the future to laugh at.
The little plastic packages with the amazing rate of failure may be going the route of their predecessors, 8-tracks.
Like more and more music stores, The Lower Level, 611 E. Grand River Ave., doesn’t carry cassettes.
“There isn’t much of a demand for them,” owner Dan Falconer said. “Once in a while someone might come in and ask for one ’cause that’s what they have in their car. That’s the only place you see cassette decks anymore.”
Tapes were originally popular because they were an improvement on the quality and durability of 8-tracks but shared their portability, Falconer said. Once CDs came along, combining these advantages with the ability to skip around as well as a better sound quality, it was the beginning of the end for tapes.
English junior Alicia Paulistin is still listening to tapes, but only because of her church.
“I still use my tape deck because I can get the sermons from my church back home on tape,” she said.
Paulistin said if her church upgrades to CDs, her tape player would fall into disuse.
“I just don’t like the whole hassle of rewinding and fast forwarding,” she said. “And it sure seems like tapes get messed up a lot.”
Tape fans can still find new copies at some local record stores. Harmony House Records and Tapes Inc., 4934 Marsh Road in Okemos, still carries tapes, but fewer are leaving in shopping bags.
“With each passing year their sales go down, but I think we still do a fair amount of business,” store manager Duane Beauchemin said.
Beauchemin said many titles don’t come out on cassette anymore.
“There’s a lot of things that only come on CD,” he said.
The convenience of CDs converted zoology graduate student Nate Coady a while ago, but his car still keeps him in the market for tapes.
“I still use (my truck’s tape deck),” he said. “Every once in a while I’ll buy a used tape.”
Coady said a tight budget keeps a tape deck in his truck.
“I’m a grad student,” he said. “I can’t even afford to fix my truck. The people I run with, we don’t have the big stereos with the CD changer in the trunk. We’ve got old cars with old tape players in them.”
The only other attraction that keeps Coady in the world of high-speed dubbing is the fact that he only has tapes of some of his favorite albums.
“I’ve got Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland,’ The Cowboy Junkies’ ‘Caution Horses’ and a lot of Garrison Keillor’s ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ stories on tape,” he said.
