Alex Tadross
Alex Tadross sells cassettes and players
Mars Tapes in Manchester is the last store in the UK that only sells music on cassettes in the UK, according to co-owner Alex Tadross.
Business is booming: “When the Oasis tour was announced, we sold out of just about everything that was Oasis. Everything went away,” he said.
Cassettes of '80s music are also popular, particularly those of Kate Bush, which Mr Tadross says is probably because her music was featured in the hit Netflix series Stranger Things.
“We get a diverse clientele,” he says. “A lot of them are customers in their 20s, teenagers who are getting into it for the first time, and then a few people who had tapes in their 40s or 50s and are buying them for the nostalgia aspect.
“But the majority are under 30. We have a lot of teenagers who come with their parents.”
Store brand cassette players are also popular.
People came to buy their first cassette player,” explains Mr. Tadross.
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Vintage audio equipment can add to the musical experience
Mars Tapes' thriving business is part of a broader trend of buying and repairing old musical equipment.
Between 2020 and 2024, Google searches for “CD player repair near me” increased by 23%, while “audio equipment repair near me” increased by 91%, according to trend data provided by the company. SEMRush software.
A Statista report predicts that the global electronics repair services market is expected to double from $122 billion (£96 billion) in 2021 to $240 billion (£190 billion) in 2033.
So why are some music lovers looking for alternatives to digital music services?
Perhaps modern Bluetooth speakers, earphones and headsets lack the character of older equipment.
“The market is saturated with devices that offer low price and convenience but provide an impersonal and sterile experience,” says Sarah Dodge, head of strategic design at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
“When you repair an item, you feel more attachment to it, so people may be drawn to a more empowering and rewarding ownership experience.”
For Mark Maher, repairing electrical equipment was a hobby, but growing demand led him to leave his job as director of a multinational power transmission equipment company in September to focus on this job full-time. time.
In fact, demand “got so out of control” that Mr. Maher closed the contact section of his website.
“There is an absolutely growing trend towards repairing vintage audio equipment,” says Mr Maher of his business Perton Electronics in the West Midlands.
“People want to restore all sorts of things, like the Sony Walkmans, tape recorders and portable CD players that they owned and loved as teenagers. There's a lot of nostalgia there.
He says people are restoring old audio equipment they bought on platforms such as Ebay. “Things were certainly better built back then and are much more repairable than newer equipment.”
He thinks he's also in high demand because “there's a real shortage of people who can fix things,” he says.
Mr. Maher also runs a YouTube channel, Mend it Mark, which has nearly 100,000 subscribers.
Marc Maher
Mark Maher quit his day job to repair electrical equipment full time
Back Market, a repackaged technology marketplace, says its audio equipment category has jumped an average of 123% year-over-year since it launched on the platform in 2016.
He says record players are his best-selling products among retro audio technology.
At Fixing Factory, a repair center in Camden, London, Dermot Jones, head of innovation and development, says audio equipment accounts for a high proportion of repairs carried out by the organisation.
“We get a little bit of everything,” says Mr. Jones. “Old cassettes, CD players, headphones, speakers and turntables. The nice thing about old equipment is that it lasts (longer), and you can find out the specs, and service manuals are available for many well into the 80's.
With some audio equipment, you can even open the case and inside is a diagram (of its interior appearance), even with arrows pointing to the screw; they are well designed.
He says electrical equipment these days seems “designed to break.”
Mr Jones adds: “It is almost never designed to be opened and repaired; it is designed and assembled quickly as if no one thought it would break. Manufacturers held this knowledge rather than sharing it. Our repair guys would have an easier time fixing things (if they did).
Dodge says the shift to repair supports the shift to a circular economy, a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated.
“One of the principles of the circular economy is to maintain the products used, in their maximum utility and value, for as long as possible. The idea is that if you take a product like a CD player and send it to the landfill, it becomes waste.
“Even if you recycle it and return it to its material level, you remove all the energy that goes into turning those materials into a CD player.”
Marc Hammond
Ellen Hammond with her restored 1960s record player
Bringing old music equipment to life can bring back special memories.
As Christmas approached last year, Mark Hammond had the idea of organizing a memorable gift for his wife of over 50 years.
In the loft there was a record player that his wife, Ellen, had received from her parents as a gift in 1960, when she was just 10 years old. The problem was that it was broken.
“I was never going to throw it away,” says Mr Hammond, who lives in Seisdon, near Wolverhampton. “There was too much history (associated with it).”
He found Mr. Maher who fixed it just in time for Christmas.
On Christmas Day, Mr. Hammond asked Ellen to go into the laundry room where she found the record player playing one of their favorite records, A Hard Day's Night by the Beatles.
Ellen's reaction was worth it, he told me.
“There were tears,” says Ellen. “It was really moving. Some of my cousins came to visit me and said, “Oh my God, we remember coming to your house and seeing that record player.”
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