Cassette culture

The cassette culture (also known as the tape/cassette scene or cassette underground) refers to the practices associated with amateur production and distribution of music and sound art on compact cassette that emerged in the mid-1970s. The cassette was used by fine artists and poets for the independent distribution of new work. This article focuses on the independent music scene associated with the cassette that burgeoned internationally in the second half of the 1970s. It is necessary at the outset to make clear what “cassette culture” refers to in regard to this article. It is not a general article on the cultural history of the compact audio cassette and its technology. The article does not cover the use of the compact audio cassette as a music medium per se, or, in general, the use of the cassette tape as a means for the cheap reproduction and direct distribution of music by artists or other individuals. The subject of this article does not refer to the use of the cassette for making illegal copies of commercially released music, or for recording broadcast music, and it does not refer to so-called "mix tapes", the creation of compilations of music by individuals on cassette tape. It does not refer to the distribution of bootleg recordings on cassette, to the use of the cassette for making demo recordings, to the distribution on cassette of music banned by the authorities or otherwise hard to source, or to tape trading. “Cassette culture”, as regards this article, refers to an international music scene that developed in the wake of punk in the second half of the 1970s and continued through into the first half of the '80s (the "postpunk" period), and in some territories into the 1990s, in which a large number of amateur musicians outside the established music industry, usually recording in their homes and usually recording to cassette-tape devices, produced music, very often of a non-mainstream or alternative character, that was then duplicated on cassette in very limited quantities and distributed free or sold at low cost to others involved in the scene and those who followed it.

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