A few years after the first Record Store Day, an annual event to “celebrate the culture of independently owned record stores,” there was a growing sentiment that cassette tapes and the independent music labels creating them were being overlooked. In the spring of 2012, I started up Indie Cassettes, a blog to review and collect the latest tapes and labels.
A preview of the Indie Cassettes blog landing page. Visitors could browse the site by tape reviews, related news, and distributors.
The blog’s coverage started small by highlighting artists’ tapes like Future Islands, Moss of Aura, Chester Endersby Gwazda, Washed Out, and STRFKR. With continuous monthly posts, the site’s popularity grew, gaining over 1,000 followers in its peak. The blog also caught the attention of labels like Cheesus Crust Records, Purr Tapes, and Crash Symbols who mailed boxes of cassette tapes to add to our collection.
A ****package of cassette tapes and other goodies, courtesy of Felt Cat Records.
Two years into the project, the first Cassette Store Day was on the horizon, thanks to the efforts of many others also helping to revive the medium. Over one hundred stores around the world participated in that first day. Although this project winded down shortly after, the resurgence of the tape was here to stay.
Some of the tape covers that the blog reviewed in its peak.