One million cassettes officially listed on Discogs

Discogs hit a new milestone earlier this week, on 11th October, with over one million cassettes having been listed on the marketplace for the first time.

The platform also hit over 1.1 million cassettes in its crowdsourced music database, with Discogs Director of Growth Marketing Jeffrey Smith saying the format’s prevailing popularity can partially be put down to an annual event called Cassette Week. “

Both of those numbers reflect the ongoing renaissance around the format that we’ve been tracking since the inception of Cassette Week in 2018,” Smith wrote in an email to the website Selector. The event is an annual celebration of all things cassettes organized by Tapehead City, an online shop based out of New York.

Participating music and record stores get involved by selling limited edition tapes recorded by various groups and artists. This year, it’s been taking place from 10th October through to 16th October.

Discogs has also credited the renaissance of cassettes to artists such as Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift releasing cassette versions of their albums, and the rising prices of vinyl records, with cassettes offering music fans and collectors an affordable alternative.

Read Discogs’ blog on this year’s Cassette Week here.

It was revealed at the start of this year that cassette sales doubled in 2020.