Cassette

 Cassette, also called tape cassette, in audio and video recording, flat, rectangular container made of plastic or lightweight metal that holds magnetic tape for audio or video recording and replay. A tape cassette is designed so that it can be inserted in a recorder and used immediately; it eliminates the need to thread a portion of the tape manually before starting the recorder. In a cassette the tape begins on a feed reel at one side and moves along guides through the record-playback mechanism, after which it passes on to the take-up reel on the opposite side.

Audiocassette tape is only 0.15 inch (3.8 millimetres) wide but can carry four to eight tracks. Videocassette tape used in home video recorders is 1/2 inch (12.7 millimetres) wide; the type employed by television broadcasters measures 2 inches (5 centimetres) in width.

Audiocassettes, which were introduced for home use in the 1960s, may be provided with prerecorded materials or with blank tape so that users can record whatever they wish. Videocassettes, which became available to consumers in the early 1970s, may also contain prerecorded materials, such as reproductions of popular motion pictures, or blank tape for recording television programs and for producing home movies. A lightproof magazine for photographic film or plates is also styled a cassette.

Back in the loop: why cassette tapes became fashionable again

Magnetic ribbon for format once the preserve of police interviews is in short supply

had been amazed by the revival. “We never stopped producing them, but demand had tailed off to tapes for police interviews.”

Around 36,000 tapes had been bought in the UK by June, according to the BPI and Official Charts Company data. One of the biggest sellers was Billie Eilish, who was born in 2001 when the format was already considered close to obsolete.

The cassette of her song When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was produced in lurid UV green and orange, making it both collectible and “Instagrammable”.

Retailers predict that Robbie Williams’ Christmas Present album and new offerings from The Who, Coldplay and Beck will be among this year’s bestsellers.

Emanuel said the UK factories that Key Production works with had been scrambling to find supplies of tape earlier this year when orders started rolling in.

“It’s difficult to say exactly how many tapes will be sold this year, but I think it will be more than 100,000,” she said. “We have probably produced 30,000 to 40,000, but the [official] figures only track those going through the sales system. Cassettes are not only being released by big artists but small struggling artists too.”

The tape revival is still tiny in the broad scheme of things. The format’s heyday was in 1989, the era of the Sony Walkman, when the music industry shifted 83m cassettes and the No1 Christmas album was But Seriously … by Phil Collins.

Cassette tape Sony-TC-50 1986

Cassette tape Sony-TC-50 1986 The world's smallest and lightest cassette tape recorder at the time, with a built-in microphone. It realized one-hand operation and attracted attention when it was used on Apollo 10