Cassette Tapes through the lens of the diffusion theory

 

Diffusion Theory is a model which shows how trends and technology are adopted by the general population. In this blog post I will be describing how cassette tapes fit into this model.

 Pioneers - The first groups that pushed through and made tapes exist are Franz Pfleumer and the Phillips Company. Both of these parties innovated to create easily portable and accessible audio recordings, the Phillips Company being the ones to begin producing and selling this technology on a commercial level to lead in to the next level of the diffusion theory.

Early Adopters - It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the first cassette tape was, but the top two contenders are "Love For Sale" by Eartha Kitt, and Nina Simone's "Wild is the Wind" and at this point most tape players were just found at home as companies hadn't quite elevated the technology yet.

Early Majority- This group had options like the Sony Walkman to make the purchase more worthwhile. While the Early adopters were keen to adopt the format due to how much more music they could store in one place, the portability made more and more people accept the idea of losing quality for accessibility.

Late Majority- At this point, tapes became the standard. Most car models had a built in tape deck and even innovated an auto-rewind feature for some players. However the decline of this late majority was incredibly steep as CDs came out and were objectively better. Higher quality and more storage, they became the default, leaving tapes in the dust after a little over a decade on the shelves.

Laggard- At this point the only people still using tapes were people using it for nostalgia or using it as the cheap option. There wasn't much allure save for affordability.

Long Tail- Going till this day, the only people hopping on the tape wagon are the people interested in the novelty or nostalgia of it. With streaming and digital music portability is no issue, and if people want a physical or vintage feel they can go the route of vinyl and CDs. Personally, I'm a big fan of tapes, but I feel a bit overburdened by how difficult it is to find players that are affordable and high quality. (The gap goes from $20 crappy players to THIS)

and that's tapes through the lens of Diffusion Theory.