Oncoming Death of the Audio Cassette

Yup its true, been in the papers & on Computer magazine Web pages. Our well used & still needed Cassette is gradually getting the boot! I know we all use CD players, MP3's, but how many of ya still go a cassette deck at home & use it as well as one in the car? So have a read to the new I copied from a webpage!

Guess we are being herded to Disks like the shops did with the VHS!

"It was a product we all grew up with and loved but it seems that Curry's has finally bowed to digital pressure and called time on the audio cassette tape.

The electrical retailer has announced that it will be destroying the cassette legacy and many memories by outing the product to make more room for its digital cousins such as iPods and mp3 players.

The decision by the retailer follows the decline in cassette tape sales from 83 million in 1989 to just 100,000 last year.

The store will also phase out tape decks by Christmas, which are currently available in less than five per cent of audio equipment.

However, the cassette family it seems will die a slow death.

Currys will continue for now to sell existing stocks of cassette tapes, but these will not be replenished giving the products a shelf life of at least 18 months.

Peter Keenan, managing director of Currys, blamed the company's decision on the rise of "today's mp3 generation [which use] just a few clicks of the mouse to achieve what's arguably a better outcome".

Mike Floodgate, development executive for the Radio, Electrical, and Television Retailers Association (RETRA), agreed.

"There has to come a time where some technology isn't used enough to warrant selling it's components," he told Computeractive. "If it is no longer being used and not needed by people then it is the right decision for Curry's."

"Maybe five years down the line the same conversation about video will come up, the fact is that once people don't need things they have to be taken off the shelves," he said.

However, Floodgate had some good news for those who can't quite part with losing the nostalgia of lovingly making a compilation cassette tape to impress the opposite sex and memories that sounds of chewed tapes emitted - often like you had dunked the singers head under water.

He said: "Some of our members might continue to continue to sell this product as they are independent of the big retail stores and have their own client base."

Currys is not the first to stop selling the cassette and its components, last year both Woolworths and HMV pulled the plug on tapes after they saw public interest in the products was dwindling.

At its mid-1980s peak 900 million cassettes were sold a year. This was largely due to the way people could record off the radio without any risks of being tracked down and fined for digital rights. However, it seems that day and age has well and truly gone – look out CD's and videos your time might be limited too."