How does materiality ‘bite back’? Investigating cassette tapes in local, translocal and virtual music scenes

Abstract

Despite its status as an analogue sound carrier, the cassette has shown remarkable resilience in the digital era. Drawing on qualitative data gathered in three significant markets for cassettes, Japan, Australia and the USA, during 2018 and 2019, this article explores how the cassette tape’s material significance in the 21st century manifests itself in a complex network of interrelated local, translocal and virtual practices of music creation, distribution and consumption. The article draws on Magaudda’s ‘circuit of practice’ concept and Peterson and Bennett’s three tier model of scenes (local, trans-local and virtual). Taking the cassette’s hybrid occurrence and usage throughout a plethora of highly distinctive music scenes in Japan, Australia and the United States as a basis, we argue that Magaudda’s ‘circuit of practice’ theory needs to be structurally extended to grasp the multifaceted circuits of music in the digital age. This requires that the occurrence of a single audio format such as the cassette is recurringly analysed within different cultural contexts in order to map and delineate the format’s overall significance for contemporary music practices.