Published On: June 6, 2025

Cassettes Are Back!? As a ’90s Kid, I’m Both Thrilled and Confused

Published On: June 6, 2025
Last Updated on: June 8, 2025
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Cassettes Are Back!? As a ’90s Kid, I’m Both Thrilled and Confused

Cassette tapes were a huge part of my teenage years, but I never expected to be talking about their comeback three decades later.

Cassettes Are Back!? As a ’90s Kid, I’m Both Thrilled and Confused

  • Nemanja Grbic is a tech writer with over a decade of journalism experience, covering everything from AV gear and smart home tech to the latest gadgets and trends. Before jumping into the world of consumer electronics, Nema was an award-winning sports writer, and he still brings that same storytelling energy to every article. At HomeTheaterReview, he breaks down the latest gear and keeps readers up to speed on all things tech.

If you grew up in the ’90s like I did, chances are you remember the satisfying click of a cassette locking into your Walkman and the agony of a tape getting eaten mid-chorus. Back in high school, my soundtrack lived on cassette tapes — bootlegs, mixtapes, and that one Offspring album I played until the tape stretched. I made mixtapes for crushes, dubbed radio hits onto Maxell blanks, and wore out more than a few rewind buttons. 

So when I started seeing cassette tapes on merch tables, record store shelves, and even major charts again in 2025, I felt a weird mix of warmth and confusion. Nostalgia? Absolutely. But is this really a “comeback,” or just another vintage trend cashing in on analog vibes?

A Brief History of the Cassette Tape

The humble cassette tape was introduced by Philips in 1963 as a compact, user-friendly alternative to reel-to-reel recorders. Originally intended for dictation, the “Compact Cassette” quickly evolved into a popular format for music once Philips freely licensed the technology to other manufacturers. By the late 1960s, millions of cassette recorders had been sold and the format was on its way to becoming a worldwide standard.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, cassette tapes surged in popularity. The introduction of portable players like the Sony Walkman in 1979 revolutionized music listening – suddenly, you could take your music anywhere in your pocket. By the mid-1980s, cassette tapes were actually outselling vinyl records as the dominant music format.

 Sony Walkman, model TPS-L2.

In fact, the cassette’s heyday peaked around 1989, when 83 million tapes were sold in the UK alone, largely thanks to the Walkman-fueled portable music craze. From rock and pop albums to homemade mixtapes recorded off the radio, cassettes were the way a generation experienced music in the '80s and early '90s.

However, the reign of the cassette was not to last. The arrival of the compact disc (CD) in the late 1980s – famously marketed as “the next best thing to live music” – introduced consumers to digital audio quality and greater durability. By the 1990s, CDs rapidly overtook cassettes as the preferred format for pre-recorded music. Cassette sales plummeted throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, and many predicted the format would go the way of the 8-track cartridge – into extinction. In the U.S., sales of pre-recorded music cassettes collapsed from 442 million units in 1990 to a mere 274,000 by 2007. By the early 2000s, cassettes were largely considered obsolete, found mostly in bargain bins and dusty attics. The once-ubiquitous tape had been effectively written off as a dead format.

Rewinding to the ’90s: A Nostalgic (and Skeptical) Reflection

I vividly remember the role cassette tapes played in my own life. As a teenager in the 1990s, I spent countless hours curled up next to my boom box, index finger poised on the “Record” button, ready to capture my favorite songs off the radio. Making a mixtape for a friend (or a crush) was an art form – carefully sequencing songs, handwriting labels, and maybe doodling some cover art. 

Cassette tapes collection.

There was a certain romance to the whir of gears and the click of the play button, and even the hiss of tape noise was somehow comforting. The tactile ritual of slipping a cassette into my Walkman and the ker-chunk sound as it locked into place are experiences deeply etched in my memories.

That nostalgia is strong. It puts a smile on my face to hear that cassette tapes are making a comeback in 2025. Part of me wants to believe it – to relive that analog magic and share it with a new generation. But another part of me is deeply skeptical. Having lived through the tail end of the cassette era, I haven’t forgotten the drawbacks. Unlike vinyl records (which audiophiles laud for warm sound and large artwork), cassette tapes were always a bit of a compromise in sound quality. 

Even with Dolby noise reduction, tapes had a notorious background hiss and limited dynamic range. The audio could warble if the tape was even slightly stretched, and let’s not forget the occasional horror of a tape getting chewed up by a hungry player. And while CDs and digital formats spoiled us with instant track skipping, cassettes forced you to manually fast-forward and flip sides – a charming inconvenience at best.

TDK cassette tape.

Because of these limitations, I question how far this cassette revival can really go. Do today’s young listeners, raised on crystal-clear streaming audio, have the patience for the quirks of cassettes? And will they be able to find decent hardware to play them on? 

Most folks tossed out their tape decks years ago, and high-quality cassette players are no longer mass-produced. My inner teenager may be thrilled to see tapes trending again, but the pragmatist in me wonders if this is more of a fleeting fad – a fun dose of nostalgia – rather than a sustainable renaissance.

With that internal tug-of-war in mind, let’s explore what’s actually happening with cassette tapes in 2025. Why exactly are these retro plastic rectangles back in the conversation, and who’s driving this resurgence?

Why Are Cassette Tapes Making a Comeback?

Despite their limitations, cassette tapes have slowly but surely crawled back from the brink of obsolescence. The resurgence isn’t purely hype – there are real, tangible reasons why cassettes are appealing in the current moment. Let’s break down the key factors fueling the cassette comeback.

Cassette tape leaned on wall.

Nostalgia for the Analog Days

The retro appeal of cassettes is a powerful draw, especially in an era where music has become intangible data. Older generations who grew up with tapes feel a sentimental pull towards them, of course. But interestingly, Gen Z listeners – many of whom never lived through the cassette era – are also enchanted by the “vintage” vibe

There’s a certain irony in young people longing for an analog experience they didn’t have, yet it’s happening. According to a report by UK manufacturer Key Production, nearly 59% of 18–24 year-olds are now actively listening to music on physical formats – including vinyl, CDs and cassettes. 

Somehow, the nostalgia bug has bitten a generation raised on iPhones and Spotify. They’re fascinated by all things 80s and 90s, and cassettes fit right into that retro aesthetic. It’s wild to see younger listeners nostalgic for a format they never actually lived through, but I get it; there’s a tactile magic to cassettes that streaming just can’t replicate.

Tactile Experience and Collectibility

For many, the cassette revival is as much about owning music as it is about listening to it. In the streaming era, you don’t truly possess the music (your favorite album can disappear from Spotify tomorrow due to licensing issues). Buying a physical copy – be it vinyl, CD or cassette – satisfies a desire to have something real and lasting. 

Cassettes offer a hands-on, ritualistic experience: holding the tape, examining the cover art and liner notes, popping it into a deck, and pressing play. This deliberate act of listening can make music feel special again, turning it from background noise into an event. Some collectors even say they enjoy the analog imperfections.

For others, cassettes are simply fun collectibles. Labels have leaned into this by producing limited-edition tapes in eye-catching colors and designs. A famous example was Billie Eilish’s debut album, released on neon green and orange cassette, which fans snapped up as Instagrammable merch.

Billie Eilish When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? album on cassette.

Much like vinyl LPs, tapes have become small art objects – something you can display on a shelf. In fact, an amusing statistic from Music Business Worldwide reveals that 50% of vinyl buyers don’t even own a record player – they buy records largely for the artwork and vibe. There’s a parallel here: a Reddit thread showed a Taylor Swift fan’s huge cassette collection, and they openly admitted it was “more for the aesthetic appeal than anything else.” The look of cassettes – retro-cool and a bit kitschy – is a selling point unto itself.

Supporting Artists and Indie Culture

Beyond nostalgia, the cassette comeback has been propelled by indie musicians and dedicated fans. Long after the mainstream abandoned tapes, underground music scenes kept the format alive – from punk and DIY bands to experimental noise artists and metal tape-traders. 

For independent artists, cassettes have a very practical appeal: they’re cheap and easy to produce in small runs. Pressing vinyl records is expensive and can take months, but dubbing 50 or 100 cassettes is relatively quick and affordable. Back in the 2000s, when CDs were king, cassettes became the affordable option for underground artists who wanted to release physical music on their own terms. That remains true today.

Small labels around the world are now cranking out tapes in every genre – from gritty punk and lo-fi garage rock to ambient electronica and hip-hop beat tapes. Many of these releases are super-limited editions (sometimes as low as 50 copies), sold directly to fans via Bandcamp or at concerts. For die-hard music lovers, buying a tape from a niche artist is a way to support them and get a cool collectible. 

In a sense, purchasing a cassette from a struggling indie band is akin to donating – except you get a physical memento in return. This grassroots aspect of the cassette revival gives it genuine staying power beyond just trendy fashion; it’s built on a foundation of artist-fan connection and the desirability of owning something rare.

Pop Culture Moments and Novelty

Specific pop culture events have also given cassettes a boost. Perhaps the most famous catalyst was the 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy, in which the hero’s prized possession is a mixtape from his mother. Marvel actually released the “Awesome Mix Vol.1” soundtrack on cassette, complete with retro packaging, as a tie-in. It turned out to be one of the first big sellers of the cassette revival and proved there was commercial appetite for the format.

Guardians Of the Galaxy 💥 (Awesome Mix) volume 1 & 2

Since then, each time cassettes pop up in a popular movie, show, or even a viral TikTok, younger audiences get curious about this funky little relic from the past. It’s a novel experience for them – almost exotic in its antiquity, which adds fuel to the comeback.

Artist Marketing and Multiple Formats

The music industry has discovered that offering albums in multiple physical formats can supercharge sales, and cassettes play into this strategy. These days, when a major artist releases a new album, it’s often available as a digital stream/download, on vinyl, on CD, and yes, often on cassette as well. Pop superstars like Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, and Lady Gaga have all embraced cassette releases in recent years. 

Why would megastars bother with such a niche format? The answer lies in fan psychology and collectibility. Superfans want to own every version of an album by their favorite artist – the deluxe vinyl, the limited CD, the special cassette edition – even if they don’t plan to play some of them. By providing a cassette option, artists give collectors another item to buy (and often these tapes are sold in exclusive colors or with signed inserts to make them even more enticing). This has a measurable impact on the charts. 

For instance, Taylor Swift’s Midnights album (2022) had an array of physical editions including four different vinyl variants and a cassette; the combined sales of those formats helped Midnights post huge first-week numbers and become one of the year’s highest-selling albums. According to Luminate, Midnights was the #2 album of 2022 in the U.S. based on sales (physical + digital) – a ranking boosted heavily by vinyl and cassette purchases, even though it wasn’t the #1 most-streamed album of that year.

Taylor Swift Midnights album on cassette.

It’s clear that labels and artists are increasingly using cassettes as a marketing tool to drive sales, engage fans, and create a sense of exclusivity. In short, cassettes have become another way to cater to collectors and completionists. If a die-hard fan already bought the album on vinyl and CD, why not also buy the cute cassette for the shelf? This dynamic has helped push cassette sales higher, even if many of those tapes end up more as souvenirs than daily listening staples.

The cassette revival of 2025 is a multifaceted phenomenon. It’s driven by nostalgia and novelty, by a craving for the tangible in an intangible world, by grassroots indie scenes, and by savvy marketing from artists big and small. But how significant are cassette tapes really, in the grand scheme of music formats today? To answer that, we need to look at some hard numbers and see how tapes stack up against their physical media siblings – vinyl records and CDs – in recent years.

By the Numbers: Cassettes vs. Vinyl vs. CDs (2020–2025)

No exploration of the cassette comeback is complete without examining sales statistics. After all, a resurgence isn’t real unless people are actually opening their wallets. So, how are cassettes selling, and how does that compare to the ongoing vinyl revival or the state of CD sales? Let’s dig into the data from the past few years.

Cassette sales, while growing fast, remain a tiny slice of the music market. In the United States, cassette album sales hit 439,000 units in 2022 and about 436,000 in 2023, essentially holding steady at a level that is eight times higher than a decade prior, according to Luminate

2025 Physical Media Market Share graph.

To put that in perspective, those ~0.44 million cassettes represented only 0.4% of total album sales in the U.S. that year. It’s a sliver of the pie, but notable because back in 2014, only about 50,000 cassettes sold in the U.S., meaning the format’s annual sales have jumped more than eightfold in ten years.

The UK has seen a similar trend. British Phonographic Industry (BPI) data shows cassette sales climbed for 10 consecutive years, reaching 195,000 units in 2022 – the UK’s highest annual cassette volume in two decades. For context, only 3,823 cassettes were sold in the UK in 2012, so the 2022 figure marks a remarkable resurgence from a very low base. That said, the UK did see a slight dip in tape sales in 2023, as the novelty cooled off a bit – but still, six-figure units were sold, and Olivia Rodrigo ended up being the UK’s top-selling cassette artist last year.

If we zoom into the most recent data, 2025 appears to be off to a blockbuster start for tapes. Following a flurry of new releases and perhaps a bump from April’s Record Store Day, cassette sales in Q1 2025 jumped a staggering 204.7% compared to the same period the previous year, according to Music Week.

Physical Media Growth Trends 2020-2025.

In the UK, that translated to about 63,300 cassettes sold in the first three months of 2025 – numbers not seen in decades for a single quarter. Such triple-digit growth far outpaced other formats (and certainly grabbed headlines), but it’s worth noting the context: that surge is on a relatively small base. Vinyl records, for instance, sold 1.7 million units in Q1 2025 in the UK, still dwarfing cassette volumes.

In the U.S., a report from Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for full-year 2023 noted that nearly half a million cassettes were sold nationwide, which, while impressive for tapes, was eclipsed by 43 million vinyl LPs sold in the same year nd about 37 million CDs. So, although cassettes are trending up, they remain a niche within the physical media niche.

The real success story in physical music has been the vinyl revival, which has now sustained 17 consecutive years of growth. Vinyl sales have exploded from the early 2000s to now, so much so that in 2022 and 2023, vinyl records actually outsold CDs in the U.S. for the first time since the late 1980s. In 2023, Americans spent about $1.4 billion on vinyl versus $537 million on CDs, buying 6 million more vinyl LPs than CDs over the year.

Vinyl has firmly re-established itself as the king of physical formats, revered for its superior sound quality, large artwork, and collectible nature. CDs, meanwhile, have been gradually declining since their peak in the early 2000s, though they saw a slight revenue uptick recently (thanks to deluxe reissues and perhaps some Gen Z curiosity about those shiny discs). Even so, in pure unit terms, CD album sales in the U.S. fell by about 700,000 in 2023, landing just under 33 million units.

Cassette tapes lot.

The physical media market in general is holding steady or growing modestly, even in the face of streaming dominance – physical formats accounted for roughly 11% of U.S. music revenue in 2023 (streaming was 84%), and industry-wide physical revenues hit about $2 billion that year. That’s not 1990s money, but it’s not nothing either, and cassettes contributed to that sum with their small but notable revival.

When comparing the three formats, a clear hierarchy emerges: vinyl is leading the retro renaissance with massive sales and cultural cachet; CDs are hanging on as a still-viable format for certain demographics (and enjoying a mini-resurgence in collector circles); and cassettes are the quirky underdog, growing fast percentage-wise but in absolute terms still a tiny niche primarily for enthusiasts and collectors. 

What’s striking is that all three physical formats – even cassettes – have lately defied the narrative that “nobody buys music anymore.” The fact that cassettes have returned to growth at all is something of a surprise to industry observers.

Voices from the Revival: Artists and Manufacturers Weigh In

It’s one thing to look at sales figures; it’s another to hear from those directly involved in the cassette comeback – the people making the tapes and the people making the music. What do they have to say about this analog revival?

On the manufacturing side, perhaps no company is more central to the story than National Audio Company (NAC) in the U.S. Founded in 1969 at the dawn of the cassette era, NAC weathered the storm through the format’s decline and never stopped production. In the 2010s, when almost everyone else had given up on tapes, NAC famously invested in producing their own magnetic tape stock to keep the format alive.

The Last Audio Cassette Factory

Today they are one of the world’s largest cassette manufacturers, pumping out tapes not just for nostalgia releases but also for major new albums. NAC’s president, Steve Stepp recalls how people thought they were crazy to stick with cassettes – “Everybody thought we were crazy. … Everybody still thinks we’re crazy,” he laughs. But from his perspective, as long as there is demand, NAC is happy to meet it. His son, vice president Phil Stepp, summed up their philosophy: “As long as tape is popular and selling and people want it, I mean, we’re planning on doing it.”

By 2023, NAC was working with about 5,000 independent labels worldwide, plus all the major labels, to produce cassettes. Steve Stepp notes that for many indie artists, “cassettes [are] the affordable option” to release music in small batches, which kept NAC busy even when tapes weren’t trendy.

Now that the trend is growing, NAC has scaled up dramatically – at one point recently they were reportedly turning out 30 million tape units a year (including blank tape and duplicated cassettes) to meet global demand. It’s a number that would have sounded absurd a decade ago, but here we are.

Artists, for their part, have been enthusiastic participants in the cassette resurgence – even if some approach it with a wink and a nod. Many indie and alternative artists have long included cassettes in their merch offerings, but seeing pop superstars embrace the format is a newer twist. 

Billie Eilish, born in 2001 (after the cassette era had largely ended), still chose to issue her albums on cassette – likely recognizing that a portion of her fanbase loves the retro feel. The 1975, a popular UK band, also put out albums on tape, and along with artists like Lady Gaga and Lana Del Rey, helped push UK cassette sales to a 15-year high a couple years back. In 2024, Selena Gomez and Sky Ferreira were among those planning special cassette editions of their new releases.

Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore album, Guts (2023), notably sold in large numbers on cassette – she ended up the world’s top cassette seller for that year. When asked about it, Rodrigo mentioned that she collects vinyl and thinks it’s “cool” to give fans a variety of formats – a sentiment likely shared by her peers who see cassettes as another way to connect with fans (and maybe score some extra chart units). 

Olivia Rodrigo Guts World Tour album on cassette.

While we don’t have these stars on record proclaiming their undying love of cassettes’ sound quality (they’d surely admit it’s not about that), their actions speak loudly. By choosing to include cassettes in their album launches, artists are effectively endorsing the format’s cultural value. It signals that tapes have gone from uncool to trendy – an unexpected badge of honor for a medium once considered dead.

Music industry analysts have taken note of who is buying these tapes. BPI spokesman Paul Williams told Sky News that the cassette market is “something at a lower level, but it is happening now…There’s this return for people wanting to own music, to go out and buy” physical copies. He pointed out that the artists doing well with cassettes are those with real fan bases – in other words, fan-driven acts with devoted followings (think along the lines of Taylor Swift’s Swifties, K-pop groups’ fan armies, or cult-favorite indie bands) are seeing the most tape sales. That makes sense: it’s the super-fans who will spring for a cassette version purely out of loyalty or collector impulse. And as long as those fans exist, artists will cater to them.

New Tech for Old Tapes: The Hardware Question

One major skepticism about a cassette comeback has been the hardware hurdle – who’s making cassette players in the 2020s, and are they any good? 

For years, the options were slim: you either hunted down vintage decks from the '80s/’90s and had them refurbished, or you bought one of a handful of cheap no-name players that often had terrible sound (the kind sold in novelty catalogues or budget electronics shops). This hardware gap could have doomed the format’s revival, but interestingly, manufacturers have started to step up here as well, sensing an opportunity.

FiiO CP13 cassete player in four different colors.

In the last year or two, several companies have launched brand-new cassette players and decks. For example, Chinese audio firm FiiO announced a new portable cassette player model (the FiiO CP13) in 2024, which is engineered with a high-quality copper flywheel to minimize the “wow and flutter” distortion that plagued cheap old tape players. They emphasize that it’s a fully analog device with no digital conversion – essentially a purist’s tape Walkman for the modern age.

Over in France, a startup called We Are Rewind released a stylish portable cassette player (the WE-001) that aims to revive the Walkman spirit with a designer twist.

“We Are Rewind is a crazy bet: to allow nostalgic people, music lovers, design enthusiasts and all those who think music is also made to be touched, to live or relive an incomparable listening experience,” the company states of its mission.

Their unit even includes conveniences like Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity and USB-rechargeable batteries, blending retro and modern for today’s users, and they also recently introduced a full-blown boombox, the GB-001, at High End Munich 2025.

Edith WE-001 cassette player by We Are Rewind, with EQ-001 wireless headphones.

For home hi-fi enthusiasts, venerable brands have also re-entered the fray. Tascam/TEAC and Marantz, known for quality audio equipment, have recently released new dual cassette decks with modern features. 

Tascam’s 202MKVII model, for instance, allows recording onto two tapes at once and includes USB output for digitizing tapes to a computer. TEAC’s decks and Marantz’s PMD-300CP likewise offer USB interfaces alongside traditional analog functions. These aren’t mass-market items, but they indicate that manufacturers see enough interest to cater to audiophiles and serious hobbyists who want a brand-new, reliable tape deck in 2025 without scouring eBay for a 40-year-old unit.

This mini-revival of hardware is a promising sign for cassette longevity. It shows that the industry believes cassettes have some staying power, despite technical limits versus digital gear.

Marantz PMD-300CP Dual-Cassette Recorder/Player with USB.

However, it’s also true that high-quality decks remain relatively expensive niche products. Many casual listeners might only experience tapes through cheap players, which unfortunately could reinforce the idea that cassettes sound awful (lots of hiss, warbling, etc.). 

In other words, if new adopters hear a poorly reproduced tape on a junky player, they may never give the format a real chance. It’s a valid concern. The hope is that as demand grows, more mid-range (affordable but decent) players will hit the market to bridge the gap, and indeed the likes of Tascam and We Are Rewind are early steps in that direction.

Enthusiasts also trade tips online about refurbishing classic decks (Nakamichi, Pioneer, Sony, etc.), which can often be obtained for less than the cost of a new smartphone if one is diligent. For now, though, the hardware aspect remains a caveat in the cassette comeback: the tapes themselves might be back on store shelves, but making them sing like they used to requires either an investment or accepting a lo-fi listening experience.

Here to Stay, or Just a Fashion Statement?

As we survey the cassette resurgence in 2025 – the rising sales, the cultural buzz, the mix of excitement and skepticism – the big question is: what does the future hold for cassette tapes? Is this trend likely to fizzle out in a year or two, once the novelty wears off? Or could tapes carve out a permanent, meaningful niche in the music landscape, much like vinyl records have?

There are compelling arguments on both sides. On one hand, it’s easy to see the cassette boom as a passing fad. The format’s appeal is driven in large part by fashion and nostalgia. Those forces can be fickle; today’s retro chic could be tomorrow’s tired meme. The practical drawbacks of cassettes haven’t gone away: they still offer arguably the worst audio fidelity of any common format (nobody is claiming tapes sound better than digital or vinyl – at best they sound “good enough” or “charmingly different”). 

They’re also relatively fragile – tapes can degrade or break, and magnetic tape heads require occasional cleaning and demagnetizing for optimal performance. Plus, outside of certain circles, convenience rules. It’s hard to imagine the average consumer, who has the infinite jukebox of Spotify in their pocket, reverting to carrying a limited 60-minute tape that you have to flip manually. 

The cassette revival could very well plateau once the core base of collectors and nostalgists has been saturated. We might see sales hit a peak and then decline again when casual curiosity is exhausted. There is precedent for this: think of the brief comeback of Polaroid instant cameras in the 2010s (niche communities still love them, but they didn’t return to mainstream ubiquity).

Retro Cassette Records in Stacks.

On the other hand, one could argue that cassettes have now proven they’re more than just a one-year wonder. The growth has been steady over a decade, not just a sudden viral blip. We’re seeing infrastructure being rebuilt – from manufacturing to new hardware – which indicates a belief that the format will stick around. The use of cassettes by major artists gives the format a legitimacy and visibility it lacked in earlier “underground only” days. 

And importantly, cassettes fulfill a slightly different role than other formats. They are cheaper and more portable than vinyl, more hip and tactile than CDs, and they slot nicely into a collector’s hierarchy as an additional option. The continued dominance of streaming for everyday listening actually liberates physical media to be something else: a premium, special way to experience music. 

Within that context, cassettes can survive as a boutique item for enthusiasts and superfans. They might not ever reach the sales heights of vinyl (which has audiophiles and a huge nostalgia base behind it), but they might not need to. If tapes maintain even a few hundred thousand sales a year in key markets, that could be enough to sustain a small ecosystem of manufacturers, labels, and hobbyists for years to come.

Industry voices tend to view the cassette revival as a smaller scale phenomenon, but one that isn’t disappearing overnight. “Not long ago, people would have written off the cassette,” admitted BPI’s Paul Williams, “but I think you have to learn the lessons of the vinyl market which had an incredible revival. It’s something at a lower level, but it is happening now with cassettes.”

His point is telling: vinyl’s renaissance taught us not to underestimate the power of nostalgia and tangibility in music. Cassettes may be “lower level” – meaning they’ll likely remain a niche – but the fact that they’re growing at all signals a real consumer desire that could sustain. Williams also noted that cassette success seems tied to artists with devoted fanbases. As long as there are passionate fans who want that limited-run cassette for their collection, and artists willing to cater to them, the format has a purpose.

Yellow Pencil on White Cassette Tape.

From my personal perspective, I suspect cassettes will not become a dominant format again (we won’t be seeing millions of tapes at Walmart or Best Buy like in 1989). But I also suspect this resurgence isn’t just a one-season fad. It has a mix of factors behind it – emotional, cultural, economic – that give it some durability. Ten years ago, if you’d told me cassettes would nearly hit half a million annual sales in the U.S. again, I’d have laughed. 

Now, I wouldn’t be shocked if they continue to grow modestly or at least hold steady for the next few years. They’ve re-entered the public consciousness. People like me, who feel a pang of nostalgia, might dig out our old tapes or buy a new one for fun. Younger folks will continue to discover the joy of analog quirks. And collectors will keep fueling a cottage industry of limited-edition releases.

In the end, the cassette comeback of 2025 is a fascinating case of everything old becoming new again. It speaks to our desire to slow down and engage with music in a physical way, to own a piece of our favorite art, and to enjoy music not just with our ears but with our eyes and hands too. Whether it’s rewinding a tape with a pencil, or popping in a brand-new album on a translucent pink cassette, the experience is delightfully different from clicking a song on a touchscreen. That experience – more than the sound itself – is what’s driving the revival.

So, are cassette tapes here to stay? In a broad sense, streaming will undoubtedly remain the king of convenience, and vinyl the king of analog cool. But cassettes have reclaimed a small corner of the music world, and it appears they’ll hang onto it for the foreseeable future. 

For those of us who remember them the first time around, it’s a nostalgic delight. And for those discovering them anew, it’s an adventure in tangible listening. The cassette may never again be mainstream, but it has undeniably rewound itself back into the conversation, and for now at least, that is music to my ears.

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