How Long Audio Cassette Tapes Last?

Predictions regarding the demise of audio tapes have been coming thick and fast over the past 20 years. When the first CDs came onto the market, it was easy to predict that the popular cassette tape was ready for the dumpster. Now, some 20 years later, the cassette tape is still being produced in solid numbers. Sure, the music market for the magnetic tape is pretty much gone, but other markets, such as spoken language tapes, continue to see strong sales.

Simple and Durable

KISS applies well to the cassette tape. The old marketing phrase "keep it simple, stupid" has worked well in many a marketing plan, and it appears to be the savior of the audio tape. The tapes themselves are fairly long-lived. With good care, they are more durable then digital forms of recording. Take a digital recording device into the middle of the jungle, and the heat and humidity will destroy the recording or the ability to record. A regular magnetic tape recording device, on the other hand, is ready to go in most conditions.

Uses

With the advent of technologically advanced music devices, one has come to expect excellent sound quality for music-listening pleasure. But the sheer marketing propaganda that the music-listening public is subject to has caused the need for recording the simple human voice in conversation to be overlooked. A nice clear voice is preferred on a recording, but the real necessity, from a practical point of view, is that the spoken word be understood. Recordings simply need to be able to get a point remembered or communicated in a decent fashion.

Court recorders are one area where there just needs to be a record of the proceedings for transcription. Books on tape need to have a certain clarity, but the present state of the medium provides for this. Perhaps one of the better examples of the durability of the audio tape comes from the U.S. Library of Congress. Its audio collection is currently on audio tape, and there are no plans of changing to a digital form in the near future. Funding is not even expected to be debated until the 2012 session of Congress.

Digitize or not?

In most instances, the audio tape is durable enough to last longer then one might expect. Proper care, of course, is needed. No tape is going to last all that long if it spends several months under the front seat of a car. If the voice, music, or audio is to be preserved for a longer period than the life of the audio tape, it will need to be transferred to disc. The audio tape does not meet the need of permanent archiving, but it will preserve the recording until the next best technology comes along.

What the digitization will do is perhaps clean up the audio a bit for better sound quality. Whether this is desirable in the first place is for the owner to decide (original blues needs the cracks and hisses), but it can be done. What drives the need for copying to digital is the lack of audio tape players. Overall, you can probably bet that audio tapes will be around longer than will the machines that play them.