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Business News Retail
Kids love cassettes, Record Store Day research claims
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 17 April 2014
One in ten young people have bought an audio cassette in the last month, according to research carried out ahead of this year’s Record Store Day. Yeah, I know, it seems like nonsense right? But when has research ever turned out to be nonsense?
ICM Research spoke to 2030 music buyers about their music buying habits and found that CDs are still more popular than downloads, with 23% of those asked saying they’d bought a shiny disc in the last month, and only 20% having bought a musical download. Vinyl, meanwhile, was a medium 10% had used to capture their audio of choice, and cassette 5% – up from 2% last year.
In the younger demographics, the purchasing of cassettes jumped even higher, with 13% of 25-34 year olds and 10% of 18-24 year olds saying they’d bought a tape in the last month. And 26% of 25-34 year olds said they’d picked up some vinyl, rising from 9% last year.
Maurice Fyles of ICM Research said of the figures: “There’s definitely a novelty value with cassettes at the moment – particularly as we suspect a high proportion of them are collectibles sitting on a shelf and never played”.
In fact, 15% of people said they bought music on physical formats with no intention of ever playing it, a number that rose to 26% amongst 18-24 year olds. Idiots.
This, concluded Fyles, is proof that people hate the internet and want to see it switched off, or something like that. He said: “Although we can store our music on a PC or in the cloud, a large proportion of music buyers continue to purchase physical formats with MP3 files as an add-on. Perhaps it’s a reaction to the digital world, but physical formats that we might have thought were relegated to history are being revived as fans and collectors opt for limited editions and promotional copies of their favourite music across a range of formats. Much of this activity is being driven from the independent record stores which continue to have a special place in music lovers hearts”.
Though the fact that this research actually found that 70% of people choose to buy their music online sort of contradicts that a bit. But, hey, this is supposed to be fun. Let’s all look forward to this Saturday’s Record Store Day, when we’ll be able to by 4287 low quality vinyl re-pressings of albums major labels previously didn’t think were worth bothering with.
