[tt] NYT: Freakonomics: Where Do People Still Use Cassette Tapes?

Tue Aug 5 13:46:29 UTC 2008

Freakonomics: Where Do People Still Use Cassette Tapes?
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/where-do-people-still-use-cassette-tapes/?scp=2&sq=cassette&st=cse
July 24, 2008,  9:37 am

The answer: in prisons, where CDs are routinely banned because they
can be shattered and the shards refined into shivs.

MP3 players are unavailable in most prisons, as are, one imagines,
turntables. California-based entrepreneur Bob Paris got the idea
five years ago to sell cassettes by mail to the 2.3 million people
locked up in federal, state, or local prisons across America. Now he
finds himself with a thriving analog business in a digital music
industry beset by piracy and plummeting sales. See this Reuters
article for more details, including Paris's best selling albums.

Recent years have seen the resurgence of vinyl record sales (outside
of prisons, of course), and even punch cards seem to have been saved
from the dustbin of history. The telegraph lasted until 2006 before
the medium finally died, but its clipped vernacular lives on in text
messaging.

Are there other examples of media that should have gone extinct but
found a nice niche in which to survive.

42 comments so far...

1. July 24th, 2008 10:22 am
Well... Andy Rooney is still broadcasting on 60 Minutes every
Sunday.
-- Posted by Greg

2. July 24th, 2008 10:31 am
Dear Freakonomics:
There's many a reason why Wall-e watches Hello Dolly on
videotape rather than on DVD -- digital data can get lost more
easily and more irreperably than analog data (sure the tape
might warp, but it can potentially still play -- the digital
"warp" is just gone...).
We have taken to tape-recording on a little hand-held cassette
machine from the 1970s the literary readings that happen on
campus as back-up for the recordings in digital format through a
high-tech sysem becaue the high-tech system proved to have loads
of ways to leave us with a blank disk (and head-scratching
technicans with "gosh, I thought it'd work" semi-apologies), and
the distinguished presenter jetting off to points elsewhere...
The pay phone industry should at this point receive subsidies
from Homeland Security to keep those contraptions on street
corners. A major weather event, act of terrorism or military
aggression could leave all those nifty wireless phones and
related devices silenced for hours upon hours. Wouldn't it be
nice for folks at or near the site of calamity to have the means
to call home to assure relatives of their being safe/alive? The
pay phone just might still be functioning...
all best,
Gale
-- Posted by Gale

3. July 24th, 2008 10:33 am
You can still find old computer programs on floppy disks sold on
eBay. I have no idea how someone would use them (I guess you
might be able to get an external floppy drive online).
Presumably people are using them with virtual machines run on
new computers, but maybe there really is a market for old Apple
][s and DOS machines...
-- Posted by Charles

4. July 24th, 2008 10:46 am
Pagers. Still see them all over the place at hospitals, but are
basically useless otherwise.
-- Posted by Gary

5. July 24th, 2008 10:53 am
Well in the UK, the BPI (aka the major music industry), the
government and ISPs have ironed out an agreement based on three
strikes of file sharing and you are disconnected.
I have written an article on my blog which examines whether this
bandaid is actually hitting the root cause of a lot of piracy.
The blog also has a video interview with Pim Betist the founder
of www.sellaband.com
Be good to get your thoughts...
http://www.themusicvoid.com/?p=110
Cheers,
Jakomi
-- Posted by Jakomi

6. July 24th, 2008 10:58 am
I could kill a guy with a cassette tape.
-- Posted by Manu

7. July 24th, 2008 11:01 am
I wore a "portable" Holter 24 hour heart monitoring device that
recorded onto a cassette tape. I had expected the equipment to
be the size and weight of an ipod, not a brick.
-- Posted by Chip

8. July 24th, 2008 11:02 am
I'm not sure about your statement or choice of words "routinely
banned" it's quite vague, and how general are statements? to one
prison, one state, or the whole country, and what percentage is
this? how often exactly is routinely banned. because from the
statement Im assuming you mean tapes are far more common than
cd's.
I'm just curious, because during a class study cd's came up
while questioning a female death row inmate & her warden. thanks
-- Posted by Bombchell.Blogspot

9. July 24th, 2008 11:15 am
VCR's which use VHS. How else could I tape Oprah, which comes to
me via rabbit ears (antenna)? I'm sure there are others in my
situation.
-- Posted by IF

10. July 24th, 2008 11:21 am
If CDs can be made into weapons, I'm suprised nobody has thought
of banning taking them on planes. Aren't they a bigger risk than
having 100ml of toothpaste in a 150ml tube?
-- Posted by Richard

11. July 24th, 2008 11:23 am
A cassette tape deck came standard with my 2002 Subaru. No CD
player. Cheap audio books for me!
-- Posted by Nicole

12. July 24th, 2008 11:34 am
It hasn't happened yet, but once flat-screen LCDs and
fluorescent light bulbs proliferate, you'll find a bunch of
damned hipsters claiming comfort in the warmth of tube TV and
filament bulbs.
http://www.youtube.com/clintosterholz
-- Posted by Clint

13. July 24th, 2008 11:40 am
Re:Pagers are still frequently used by doctors and drug dealers.
-- Posted by Blake

14. July 24th, 2008 11:45 am
Interesting-he started stockpiling cassette versions of albums a
few years ago. But that certainly limits his catalog.
I wonder-would he run afoul of piracy issues if he purchased new
CDs, copied them onto tapes, and then destroyed the CDs?
Obviously, the costs would increase, both because CDs generally
cost a lot and because the transfer process would be a
time-consuming pain in the butt. But it would expand his
offerings.
A simple analogue in another industry is re-binding companies
like PermaBound, which buy paperback books from publishers, cut
the covers off, and then re-bind them with very durable library
bindings.
-- Posted by Matt

15. July 24th, 2008 11:49 am
As mentioned, pagers are used by doctors. They are also used in
large chain restaurants.
-- Posted by IF

16. July 24th, 2008 11:52 am
"MP3 players are unavailable in most prisons..."
Um, why?
They're relatively cheap and can provide a lot of content -- a
1GB MP3 player costs about $50 and has a relatively high
capacity.
And they're rather tough to weaponize (I suppose you could
garrote someone with the wire for the earbuds maybe).
-- Posted by jblog

17. July 24th, 2008 11:58 am
Though not exactly "media," blocks of ice were the primary
source of cooling for many parts of the world for quite some
time. With the advent of mechanical chillers, the ice industry
has tapered off, though blocks of ice are still bought and sold
to be carved into ice sculptures.
-- Posted by Steven Peters

18. July 24th, 2008 12:12 pm
Fax machines. Don't get me started.
-- Posted by Hank

19. July 24th, 2008 12:30 pm
@11 Right on.
I have a driving job for which I must be on the road at least 6
hours a day.
My 2000 Ford has no other options and I'm not ready to get an FM
transmitter for my MP3 player.
My local library has an almost inexhaustible supply of
audiobooks via inter-library loan.
Cassette tapes-not just for felons anymore.
-- Posted by erika

20. July 24th, 2008 12:40 pm
> And [MP3 players are] rather tough to weaponize...
Even so, you could probably get funding from Congress to try
dropping several thousand explosive-laden iPods from an
airplane. It's not a "delayed-detonation cluster bomb", it's the
"dissemination of friendly ideology via cleansing of
counter-culture dance parties".
-- Posted by blue92

21. July 24th, 2008 12:44 pm
Some years ago I was invited to MTV's Latin America 10th
anniversary concert and the invitations were 5¼-inch disks. I
now these are useless nowadays, but I still think it was a nice
detail.
-- Posted by Adrián

22. July 24th, 2008 12:54 pm
All sorts of non-solid state devices (Ignitrons, vacuum tubes,
etc) are used in high energy applications (such as transmitters)
where solid state devices would melt or fail to function due to
the high heat or EM radiation.
-- Posted by Mike B

23. July 24th, 2008 1:14 pm
I think the bigger problem with MP3 players is getting the
actual music. Not sure they'll let you plug into iTunes while
you're on lockdown.
-- Posted by Claire

24. July 24th, 2008 1:29 pm
To erika #19: why not get a cassette adapter for your MP3
player? That's how I listen to my iPod in the car (a 2000 Jeep,
which has a cassette player)? Don't get the FM transmitter -- if
you live anywhere near a city, it's too much of a pain, because
you have to keep changing frequencies to get away from nearby
radio stations. The cassette adapter is much better!
Urb
-- Posted by Urbie

25. July 24th, 2008 1:37 pm
Laserdiscs are still sought by many collectors as many of them
contain material either different than or missing from DVD and
VHS editions.
They are also quite useful in artwork and decoration, e.g.,
cutting them into snowflakes and hanging them in a tree outside
around Christmas.
-- Posted by Chris

26. July 24th, 2008 1:38 pm
Also - one more: MiniDiscs. A "failed" format overall, but very
useful for electronic musicians to share and sample.
-- Posted by Chris

27. July 24th, 2008 4:05 pm
Vacuum tubes are still used in some guitar amps. Even though a
good solid state amp can reproduce the sound of a tube amp
nearly perfectly at a lower cost, some people think a tube amp
sounds better (a lot of those people probably think vinyl is
superior to CD too).
-- Posted by kip

28. July 24th, 2008 4:15 pm
Horse carriages have found a niche in Central Park and Colonial
Williamsburg.
-- Posted by kip

29. July 24th, 2008 5:39 pm
MTV music videos!
-- Posted by StKev

30. July 24th, 2008 6:52 pm
@12 - I already prefer not to use fluorescent bulbs in my
personal living quarters. I prefer the warmth of incandescent
bulbs, and I have several friends who feel the same way. We're
hardly hipsters.
On the subject of cassette tapes - I drive a 1996 Jeep Cherokee
right now that only has a cassette deck. This was extremely
depressing to me, then I got one of those tape adapters that
were designed to let you plug your cd player in in the car. Now
I plug my ipod in and am good to go. Forget books on tape, I can
listen to whatever music I want.
-- Posted by Grant

31. July 24th, 2008 11:59 pm
Yes, Salon magazine is a representative of a dying breed, the
web publication which wants you to pay money to read it, or else
navigate your way thru a bug-filled sequence of ad pages that do
not get you to the article, but just freeze your system in some
kind of loop. Soon may it die. And please, please, please, NY
Times, DO NOT LINK US TO ANY MORE OF ITS ELUSIVE ARTICLES.
Thanks.
-- Posted by Charles

32. July 25th, 2008 1:18 am
I'm with #18. Fax machines should die. They have horrible
quality issues and you just end up getting a bunch of spam that
uses YOUR ink and paper. It's easy enough (and generally
quicker) to scan and email a document, and if I don't trust you
enough to open an attachment you have no business faxing me
anyway.
-- Posted by Layla

33. July 25th, 2008 1:59 am
In 2003, I tore out my old tape player from my car to install a
fancy CD player, only to find myself totally immersed in iPod
culture a year later, with my entire 60 gigs filled to the brim
with all the stuff I now love. It's great and all, but now when
I'm in my car, I wish I had that old tape player, so I could use
an iPod cassette adapter (they're so much simpler than those
annoying fm transmitters). But I'm stuck listening to my old
CDs.
-- Posted by Paul

34. July 25th, 2008 2:44 am
Books on tape?
HMMMM. I'm pretty much interested in all things geeky
(especially economic geek stuff) and an eco grad...
But...
Books on tape. That's a bit too dorky, even for me. Hardly a
reason why I'd trade in my 6 stacker or MP3 player for a
cassette player.
Euuugh. Books on tape. Euuugh.
I'm going to go for a walk to wash off the dork vibe that has
surrounded me.
;)
-- Posted by James

35. July 25th, 2008 3:32 am
Working at a mental ward we actually had several patients trying
to end their lives with CDs. Those bastards can be razor sharp
if you how to crack them correctly...
-- Posted by Nomnom

36. July 25th, 2008 5:02 am
Audio books still sell a lot of tapes. It is easy to turn it
off, swich players and you will start exactly where you left
off.
I find it amazing that books on tape are cheaper than books on
CD even though it is significantly cheaper to produce the CD
-- Posted by neil wilson

37. July 25th, 2008 10:49 am
Remember microfilm or microfiche? It still has a home in your
local library or city government office. We tried to save things
electronically, but then some freakish server crash ended our
faith in electronic document storage. And it doesn't take an IT
guy to find a mis-filed piece of microfilm.
-- Posted by whoanellie

38. July 25th, 2008 12:27 pm
If CDs can be made into weapons, I'm suprised nobody has thought
of banning taking them on planes. Aren't they a bigger risk than
having 100ml of toothpaste in a 150ml tube? -- Posted by Richard
That has already been a recommendation when they banned legal
knives.
And no a cd-knife is not a greater risk to the plane
collectively than a 10oz bottle of explosive gel...
-- Posted by ec

39. July 25th, 2008 3:07 pm
I thought carbon paper was a medium that was dead, but buy
anything in China at a grocery store, and go to the front
counter for a receipt, and the clerk there will take forever
writing out the receipt by hand and using good old carbon paper
to copy in triplicate your purchase, and will store it somewhere
with all the other millions of copies of receipts in some vault
somewhere where archeologists in the future will someday find a
trove of important cultural relics from the ancient Hu Dynasty,
giving a glimpse into the complex purchasing habits of
pre-capitalist Chinese consumers before they dominated and later
destroyed the world.
-- Posted by corbett

40. July 25th, 2008 6:04 pm
Where am I going to get the 400+ albums I taped on cassette?
When they shut down Napster, my plans were derailed. The other
sites only have a few common songs.
-- Posted by Steve

41. July 27th, 2008 10:20 am
To all those out there who want to listen to an iPod in the car,
def don't go with the FM transmitter (they are horrible) but
check out this link, enter the year, model and you should find
an excellent solution!
http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/autoinfo/autoinfo.as
p?sl=Y&vb=Y&lp=%2fg_305250%2fiPod-Adapters-for-Car-Ster
eos.html%3ftp%3d120
-- Posted by Kev

42. July 27th, 2008 2:21 pm
In response to Chris, RE: mini-discs, I concur, though I'd like
to add that they're also popular with "bootleggers" and people
who record live music for trading purposes.
I own a mini-disc recorder myself, and as an ethnomusicologist,
I find it incredibly useful in the field, both for documenting
musical performances as well as interviews. It's a great format
that understandably never caught on, but also understandably
found a niche because of the unique characteristics of the media
(compact size, high quality, etc.)
-- Posted by Randy