For the Love of Tape
Backup
As we head into the celebration of Valentine’s Day, we look to the heartfelt version of tape – with some surprising statistics on sales of cassette tapes in 2017. Did you know (according to Nielsen Music), US cassette sales had a 35% increase over 2016 with 174,000 sold. We accredit this trend to “hipster” artists bringing back an old trend to differentiate their record launches including Lil Uzi Vert’s Luv is Rage, DJ Khaled’s Grateful, and Lana Del Rey’s Lust for Life.
The LTO Program announced yet another record year for LTO capacity shipments in 2017, with more than 108,000 PB of total compressed capacity shipped. That represents a 13% annual increase over 2016 and more than double the capacity shipped just four years ago, in 2013.
Over the past month, I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time out in the field – connecting with a lot of interesting customers at industry events and spending quality time with Quantum’s regional sales teams around the globe. One common theme across all of this seems to be a resurgence in interest in LTO technology, based on two dynamics and two use cases.