The revival of cassette sales continues for ninth year in a row!
Chalkpit Cassette Club - Join The Club
The revival of cassette sales continues its steady growth for a ninth consecutive year.
New figures to be released by record labels’ association the BPI using Official Charts Company data will show that purchases of vinyl LPs and audio cassettes in 2021 continued their surge of recent years.
Though still just a fraction of overall UK recorded music consumption, and often released in limited edition format, cassettes now come as standard on many album releases. Final figures for 2021 are likely to show that around 190,000 tapes were purchased in the past 12 months – up by around a fifth (20%) on the year and the highest amount since 2003, when 243,000 tapes were sold and Now 54 was the year’s biggest seller on the format. This marks a ninth year of consecutive growth for the format, which is finding a new market among music enthusiasts of all ages who value its retro, collectable appeal.
Among the most popular titles released on cassette in 2021 were Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour, Dave’s We’re All Alone In This Together and Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres.
More often than not, having an album available on physical formats plays a pivotal role in artists being able to achieve No.1 albums in the Official Albums Chart. In 2021 to date in 40 of the 52 weeks of the year the album that topped the Charts did so thanks to combined CD, vinyl and cassette purchases accounting for over half the album’s consumption in the week that it got to No.1 – a trend exemplified by Adele’s album 30, which in its first five weeks of release saw 75% of its chart sales attributable to physical format purchases.
Overall, over 240 album titles were purchased more than 10,000 times during the past year across all physical formats (vinyl, CD and cassette).
