Home Taping Is Killing Music: When the Music Industry Waged War on the Cassette Tape During the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

Tak­ing punk and reg­gae albums and mak­ing cas­sette tapes was huge for me in the ’80s. After that I had a few friends burn me cds — most of which I prompt­ly bought.None of it impact­ed my actu­al pur­chas­es, oth­er than to help them, of which the musi­cians hope­ful­ly ben­e­fit­ed.

Stream­ing my be dif­fer­ent, but I have nev­er tak­en a shine to it, so like the author-don’t blame me!

I have 100’s of hours of the Howard Stern show on cas­sette

I, like many teenagers, sat next to the boom­box with a large capac­i­ty cas­sette loaded up wait­ing to hit play/pause at begin­ning of every song. If it was a song I did­n’t like, or already had, I just rewound the tape a lit­tle bit and queued it up wait­ing for the next song. I’d do that all day! Made many fine mix tapes. We’d call up the sta­tion to give a shout out and eager­ly try to record that if it made it on the radio too. The abil­i­ty to pull up any song, at any time, these days, is such a mar­velous thing when I think back to those days!

Hey­man man strong begin­ning, bit of a fiz­zleat the end. Love the mix tape still have some. Love the mixed disc, still have some, love the file share still have a com­put­er full, do not like the You tube music, the Spo­ti­fy or the deez­er. Gone back L.P’s.

Hel­lo, and how are you doing?
Well, I am grate­ful for your sacrifice,and help with life, with the cre­ative way to stir up trouble,when it is applied right.

Caus­es peo­ple to look,and to become con­scious of the unseen becomes seen.
Putting out fires,like I say!

Keep on the rhythm, where it goes,it goes!
Do it your­self made me realize,the cost where it goes to make life,come through.
Words, Music, Activ­i­ty!
Thought!
Free­dom is the best way to fight out,through all Bull­shit ‚that has been applied.
Then falls off, when it is free­dom achieved,then real sight is about that!
Peace!

back in the ear­ly 90’s there was a late sun­day show on local radio with host Claude Rajotte that was cen­tered main­ly around alter­na­tive music.
I would record the entire show, and then lat­er re-dub the tracks I liked onto a mix­tape.

my music tastes would­n’t be what they are with­out that show and the mix tapes I was mak­ing from it.

I have been record­ing music off the radio onto cas­settes and CDs, record­ing TV and movies onto VCR and TiVo, and sav­ing streamed music, movies, and TV shows (for per­son­al use only) for as long as I can remem­ber. I’ve even mixed tapes for friends and fam­i­ly.
I do this main­ly because I can’t afford to buy all the music that I want to lis­ten to (who real­ly can afford to pur­chase it all?).
I lis­ten to all of my music for $15 a month, record what I lis­ten to and have it all saved on my home serv­er.
Now, for those bands that are still active and not burnt out, I attend every show that comes close and buy all their merch.
What good is a beau­ti­ful pho­to, paint­ing, sculp­ture, and what­ev­er else artists cre­ate, if no one expe­ri­ences it?
Music should be free to lis­ten to and if you enjoy it, go pay to see the band per­form those songs live and buy a t‑shirt.

Cap­i­tal­ism and greed is the root of all evil.

I wish the web inter­face allowed me to upvote your com­ment.

Record­ing Dj Red Alert 98.7 Kiss FM and Mr Mag­ic Rap Attack on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day nights was week­ly rit­u­al! Back then these were the only hours you could hear Hip Hop on the radio. We record­ed the show and the next day flex the tape to the crew hop­ing they fell asleep before you did, which meant you got some­thing they did­n’t.
Before the dj shows, we had the mix tapes that would cir­cu­late through out the hip hop com­mu­ni­ty, record­ings of par­ties thrown in aban­doned build­ings, parks and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters fea­tur­ing djs like Kid Capri, Kool Herc and oth­ers.
Hon­est­ly come to think about hip hop may not be where it’s at today if it weren’t for the under­ground cas­sette tapes that were dubbed and passed along from NY to cousins in the South.

No I don’t think that had an impact . Most of us bought our albums . We want­ed the cov­er art , the lin­er notes if there were some , and all the cred­its of those involved along with the music We owned some­thing . Now the Inter­net , down­load , com­put­er click era ? That has altered the ecol­o­gy to where there is no more record indus­try.

I still have some col­lec­tor vinyl because I record­ed them and left them pris­tine. I’d lis­ten to the tapes instead. Could­n’t lis­ten to vinyl in my old Volk­swa­gen, any­way.

Mi primera colec­ción de punk y rock alter­na­ti­vo esta­ba com­pues­ta por cien­tos de k7s copi­a­dos de otros, tam­bién copi­a­dos. Un hiisssh­hh deli­rante sum­a­ba una intere­sante estéti­ca a lo que son­a­ba en mi vie­ja Sony. Luego, con los dis­cos com­pactos, ahorra­ba sem­anas para com­prar uno, o cualquier ami­go, y luego los copiábamos en K7s para com­par­tir­los con lxs amigxs. Con mis primeras ban­das grabábamos de man­era casera y com­partíamos nues­tra músi­ca. Más tarde llegó el Inter­net y todo fue dis­tin­to. De mi colec­ción de cer­ca de 500 k7s solo conser­vo unos cuan­tos. A esta colec­ción se suman las pro­duc­ciones de ban­das inde­pen­di­entes que aho­ra le apues­tan a este for­ma­to. ¡Una mar­avil­la!

Tim, I still do that today
Includ­ing call­ing radio sta­tions and record­ing it

In the 1960’s, I would sit next to the radio with a small reel to reel tape recorder hold­ing the micro­phone next to the speak­er. When I was old­er, I scratched up many records learn­ing the gui­tar parts lit­tle by lit­tle, try­ing to put the nee­dle onto the right spot for the next part.

Record­ing or copy­ing an artist’s cre­ation is steal­ing mon­ey the pub­lish­er, the writer, the pro­duc­er, and final­ly the artist him­self. Whilel it’s true the record busi­ness had a great deal to do with its own down­fall by price goug­ing and oth­er ques­tion­able prac­tices, the fact remains that you are steal­ing. If this con­tin­ues even­tu­al­ly they’ll be no new music of qual­i­ty avail­able for the sim­ple rea­son that there will be no mon­ey in it. If there’s no mon­ey in it how many young peo­ple will say “Boy or boy I want to become a musi­cian and be broke the rest of my life? Think about that the next time you steal from an artist.

First: here’s anoth­er half-arti­cle. Sigh. Just when it gets going, it ends! No writ­ten con­clu­sion, it just stops. Why is jour­nal­ism doing this these days??

Sec­ond, OT: no one was ever hurt from us tap­ing songs off the radio, peri­od. The legal­i­ty of labels’ efforts to stop it had to do with mak­ing mon­ey off tap­ing, which just nev­er hap­pened. I know it alleged that tap­ing meant few­er records sold, and I’m sure that was par­tial­ly true. But, umm, if you grew up doing this, you also know you nev­er got an unblem­ished tune— DJs often clipped the ends and fre­quent­ly talked up to the vocals.

And what about all the rare stuff radio offered? I used to tape hours of sets, com­mer­cials and all, just because. And simul­cast con­certs and King Bis­cuit Flower Hour shows? Were we NOT sup­posed to record those? Cuz I missed that dis­claimer, which would’ve been espe­cial­ly rich com­ing from labels that sup­plied said music.

Along with that is anoth­er fact: radio broad­casts com­pressed sound, and when we bought albums, guess what? They sound­ed much bet­ter than over-the-air. We did actu­al­ly buy music! Real­ly, even though record com­pa­nies had SOME mer­it in their com­plaints, remem­ber we’re talk­ing about mega-cor­po­ra­tions that make bank off artists who his­tor­i­cal­ly have got­ten the raw deal from them. Sooo…. this has nev­er been a clean dis­cus­sion.

Well, I remem­ber — actu­al­ly I don’t, since this was way back, but know it as a his­toric fact — when there was NO music INDUSTRY and peo­ple were active­ly mak­ing music. Music is cul­ture and cul­ture should not be pri­va­tized. There were tal­ent­ed and skill­ful musi­cians and com­posers and there were ways to stim­u­late both to make music, that’s how we have cen­turies of progress in the art of music, but there were no agents and man­agers and record labels and bean coun­ters who are now scream­ing about theft, not of music but of their income. That is basi­cal­ly what you’re talk­ing about. Most of the tal­ent will do fine when the new mod­el, the one that will replace the above mod­el, sets in and music will not dis­ap­pear, it’s just that a lot of the mid­dle men were removed from the process.

Yes! The real crime start­ed with file shar­ing. Mak­ing mix tapes or record­ing so you could play your music in your car wasn’t that harm­ful. A mix tape was great for mak­ing your own playlist back on the ancient years of the 70s to mid 80s. I can nev­er recall a time when a time when I wouldn’t buy an album because I could get a tape record­ing. It just wasn’t the same. In todays dig­i­tal age the file shar­ing is (was) mak­ing great sound­ing copies of music for the mass­es. That is when mon­ey was being lost. When I first heard of the con­cept I thought ‘How is this legal’?

I tried to erad­i­cate Bil­ly Joel music thru relent­less tap­ing, but to no avail.

For me, it was an issue of mon­ey. I AM AN ADDICT. I could­n’t afford to buy the music I want­ed, so I start­ed out tap­ing friends records onto RtR tape, lat­er to cas­settes. It is in fact cap­i­tal­ism that hurt things. The indus­try has their own unique book­keep­ing sys­tem, so it’s eas­i­er for them to rip-off musi­cians. Even now, with the dig­i­tal sys­tems, musi­cians are get­ting screwed.