Cassette Culture Continues
The LA Times recently featured a local cassette recorder repair business.
Author: Dave Morton
Acoustic Sounds is Cranking Out LPs in Salinas
“Chad Kassem, founder of Kansas vinyl record giant Acoustic Sounds, turned his hobby into a career–but his journey to success was anything but straightforward.” CBS Saturday Morning co-hosts Michelle Miller and Dana Jacobson interviewed Kassem at his warehouse/manufacturing plant in October, 2025. Watch it on youtube by clicking here.
The Recorders that Defied the USSR
Many scholars have documented the ways that Soviet citizens used technologies like audio tape and videotape to copy and distribute western entertainment (see for example Gene Sosin, “Magnitizdat: Uncensored Songs of Dissent” in Rudolf L. Tokes, ed. Dissent in the USSR, chapter 8). A recent Reuters story documents Kazakhstan’s museum of Soviet-era tape recorders. They Read More …
The Hart Mfg. Co. Recordgraph
Frederick Hart was an English engineer who immigrated to New York in 1884. He established a company in Poughkeepsie in the early 1900s to build steam-powered automobiles, but soon became a manufacturer of Hollerith punched-card equipment for a nearby company that, as it turns out, would be a predecessor to International Business Machines (IBM). Hart eventually became president of a new IBM munitions division in the 1940s, located in Poughkeepsie. His original company, which by 1944 was making military gun parts, was purchased by the American Type Founders Company, and later became part of Daystrom Corporation. Hart apparently formed a new firm, which manufactured something called the Recordgraph. How and why Hart got into that business is unclear. Read More …
The sound recorder database is back.
When I first built this site, it was all hand coded. At some point I decided, foolishly, to try to create a database of every magnetic recorder ever made. It included a back end that I could use to upload and edit new records, and a front end for the public to use for searching. Read More …
Malcolm Riviera’s Final Track
I just discovered that Malcolm Riviera (pseud. of Gary C. Broyhill, b. Sept. 17, 1956) died in late July or early August, 2023. No formal obituary has been published online, but he was memorialized in the September 2, 2023 edition of the Trash Flow Radio show on WAIF FM, Cincinnati. The link takes you to Read More …
For all the Vinyl Hype, This is Still the Era of Streaming
A great tool for visualizing the current state of the recorded music market is the RIAA’s U.S. Sales Database, which allows you to to filter and sort record sales data in numerous ways. Here’s a screen shot of overall sales since 1973. Although this only represents sales in the US, it still provides some perspective Read More …
LP Sales are Still Going Up
According to Statistica, US sales of LP record albums increased about 14% in 2023 to about 49 million. The same site claims that 82,000 turntables were sold in the US in 2021. 2023 was the second year in a row during which LP records outsold CDs. But people still do not seem to be listening Read More …
Bucks Burnett
Bucks Burnett, a Texas record collector, record store owner, and museum operator, died in October, 2023. Burnett was one of the early and vocal advocates of collecting music on 8-track tapes. In the early 1990s, 8-tracks were bottoming out in terms of popularity and value. Bucks was one of many who nostalgically latched onto them Read More …