By now the people who don’t believe that vinyl is making a comeback are the ones who declare that in never left.

That’s hardly news.

What is news, and what I found very hard to believe is sources who declare that cassette tapes are making a comeback.
What?

I found that hard to believe. But according to AV journalist Steve Guttenberg, music retailer Other Music in NYC has seen a 13% increase in pre-recorded tape sales year over year.

Granted, he admits that the only artists putting out new pre-recorded cassettes are garage, indie and experimental artist.

In other words: Hipsters.

Of course, if someone is producing cassette tapes that means that someone else is listening to them. And that requires equipment.

Imagine my surprise to see what Sony Walkmans are selling for on Amazon.

The only thing more shocking than the fact that a Sony WM-FS555J S2 Sports Cassette Walkman sells for $349.99 (!) new is the notion that a 17 year old Walkman model would still have any new-in-the-clamshell inventory floating around. What lost warehouse did somebody find a bunch of these in?

Equally surprising is how much new, unopened blank tapes are selling for. Twenty bucks for a 2-pack of Denon high-bias tapes? Eighty bucks for a 10-pack of TDK Type I?

This retro nostalgia is of course nonsense.

As teens back in the 80s my friends and I listened to and dubbed cassettes solely for the portability and convenience factors, even as we derided the sound quality (Vinyl was of course superior).

And by the time CDs became commonplace around 1988-89 we were buying more CDs and fewer pre-recorded cassettes. Nor were we sorry to see them go.

Any appearance of a “rebirth” of cassettes affirms the notion that some people just want to be different.