Saturday 14 August 2021

An ode to home taping for Cassette Store Day back in 2018


"During the 1980s, record companies (who, thanks to the launch of the CD, were hardly short of cash at the time) ran an aggressive anti piracy campaign featuring a cassette skull and crossbones logo which claimed, in big, stern letters that Home Taping Is Killing Music.

If the intention was to scare people into not doing it, it didn’t work.

Years before downloading and torrenting, taping off the radio was both illegal and normal: You never heard of anyone being prosecuted for it and the idea of the police descending on eight year old bootleggers seemed, not only unthinkable, but also ridiculous."

The short extract above is taken from the first piece that I wrote for Medium, back in 2018. I was being very cautious, just trying it out to see what happened and was pleased to find that the piece was well received at the time, and continues to get a bit of a surge in readers whenever Cassette Store Day rolls around each year. 

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