Cassette Tapes Are Making a Comeback, Partly Thanks to the AARP Generations

CD and streaming sales are down, cassette sales have doubled and nostalgic fans over 50 are one reason why

Edna Gundersen,

AARP

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Published October 01, 2025

a collage with taylor swift and a vintage audio cassette tape

AARP (Getty Images,2)

They hissed, unraveled and degraded. And yet the lowly plastic music cassette, a long abandoned, predigital fossil, is enjoying an unexpected comeback, embraced by global superstars, indie labels, record stores, young collectors — and people age 50-plus, who will never forget the era of mixtapes, nor the scene in 1989’s Say Anything of lovelorn Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack, now 59) holding a boombox over his head, playing a tape of Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” for Diane Court (Ione Skye, now 55).

Taylor Swift’s brand-new The Life of a Showgirl is on cassette (along with the usual digital, CD and vinyl formats). So is Metallica’s remastered Load and Pulp’s current More, the British rock band’s first studio album in 24 years.

The 1990s alt-rock legend Juliana Hatfield, 58, will offer Lightning Might Strike, out Dec. 9, on cassette, and pop-rocker Demi Lovato’s It’s Not That Deep, arriving Oct. 24, has a cassette option. Infinite, the ninth and final album by former rap duo Mobb Deep, will include a cassette edition when it lands Oct. 10. Pop siren Ariana Grande released three two-track cassette singles on Sept. 24.

Cassettes thrived in the 1970s and ’80s, both in prerecorded form and as home-recording tools. They eclipsed vinyl in 1985 and were the most popular format in the U.S. and the U.K. until 1992, when CD sales pulled ahead. Cassettes peaked in 1989 with sales of 83 million units. After the turn of the century, with the domination of CDs and MP3s, tapes declined sharply and were all but extinct after the rollout of streaming.

But remarkably, the past five years have seen an uptick in cassette sales, concurrent with a slowdown in CD, digital and streaming purchases. Entertainment data leader Luminate reports that total U.S. album sales are down 6 percent over last year, and digital sales dropped almost 18 percent.

Luminate does not break down U.S. sales of individual cassette titles, but its data closely coincides with U.K. figures. The top sellers there last year included cassettes by young artists (Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo), as well as those in the AARP demo (Eminem, 52, Kylie Minogue, 57, and Blur, whose four members are ages 56 to 61).

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U.S. cassette sales more than doubled in the first quarter of 2025 and are projected to exceed 600,000 copies by the end of the year. From 2015 to 2022, sales of the ignoble tape increased 443 percent. Total units sold aren’t huge, but for boomers who remember rewinding unspooled cassettes with a pencil, the upward trend defies logic.

Or does it?

Ironically, one factor boosting the cassette’s popularity is also what shoved it into obsolescence: streaming.

“Young people are feeling a little jaded or cheated by the way streaming works,” says music journalist Marc Masters, author of High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape. “Streaming doesn’t pay artists well and dictates to listeners through algorithms. There’s an impersonal aspect to streaming. It doesn’t feel like you own it, like something you buy and put on a shelf.”

The cassette’s initial appeal “basically came down to cheapness, ease of use and portability,” Masters says. “You didn’t need to be an audiophile to figure out how to use them. They were generally cheaper than vinyl, and the portability changed everything. Before cassettes, the idea of taking music out of your house was inconceivable.”

Some of that appeal holds true today. Cassettes feed the hunger for old formats but are less expensive for manufacturers, artists and buyers than vinyl. As for Gen Z fans who are amassing tapes when they don’t even own players, Masters likens it to buying a concert T-shirt.

“It’s hard to find tape decks,” he says. “It’s about wanting to support artists and wanting to own something made by the artists. It’s kind of a cool thing.”

Some artists are releasing cassettes as instant keepsakes. The Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication is available in a 30th-anniversary limited-edition green cassette. ABBA issued its best-selling greatest hits album as a limited-edition gold cassette. On its website, Maroon 5 is selling an exclusive cassette of new album Love Is Like with an alternate cover.

Nostalgia plays a role in the cassette’s resurgence. The format’s lo-fi charms play to the current ’80s/’90s retro rage, a trend not limited to younger generations. The bug has bitten all age groups, “including people who were there for the cassette’s heyday,” Masters says. “Everyone seems to have a cassette tape memory.”

Millennials and Gen Z buy more cassettes than other groups. They are drawn to the bygone aesthetic and emotional, immersive experience — a cassette is designed to be heard from beginning to end, without skipping songs or jumping around. Nostalgic 50-plus music fans, many of whom never deserted physical media, are also returning to the humble cassette, while others are providing inventory.

“To the young, those tapes are cool,” says Trevor Baade, owner of L.A.’s Jacknife Records & Tapes. “And people in their early 50s are into hip-hop, metal and punk. They want to collect those tapes and relive their childhood.”

Baade gambled on a cassette resurgence in 2012 and altered the Jacknife layout to display a 20-foot wall of tapes in the front of the store. “The idea was to put all formats on a level playing field,” Baade says. “Tapes were a risky choice. But I saw the rise coming. We have contemporary and vintage, fancy collectible tapes and some that are 10 tapes for $5. The hottest are ’90s indie rock and bands like Nirvana. That’s the stuff we never have enough of.” The punk generation has grown up, but it’s still helping drive big changes in the music market.

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