Tape trading

Edit links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about tape trading of the 1980s and 1990s. For current tapers and sharing, see Taper (concert).

Tape trading is an unofficial method of distribution of musical or video content through the

films and pornography.[4]

The practice faded in prominence in the 2000s, as the rise of

podcasting largely supplanted the need to mail out physical copies of recorded content. However, a smaller scale network of tape traders still exists as a sort of nostalgic
hobby among fans of some musical genres.

History

Tape trading was a postal system reliant, penfriend style nature of an underground network that relied heavily on the cooperation of fans of different musical genres worldwide as well as the acts being promoted this way themselves eschewing any

record deal
.

The

compact cassette
medium and traded, although this was in infringement of both unofficial 'rules' of the network and actual copyright law itself.

Many traders would, unrequested, fill unused space on the C-60 and C-90 tapes of demos they compiled for fellow traders with local bands in which they were members, or acolytes of. This led to a musical cross-pollination between geographically diverse and disparate areas such as Scandinavia, USA and the UK and their own bands/scenes. One notable example of how initial contact through tape trading lent to this trend is in the case of Righteous Pigs guitarist

recordable CDs helped the preservation of sound quality of recordings throughout trades. The popularization of broadband internet and digital music in its various forms has led to music by unsigned acts being swapped electronically and therefore tape trading through the postal system is considered by most to be outdated.[6]

Heavy metal tape trading (notably black metal, death metal, doom metal) through the postal system is still in practice, but mainly as a nostalgic hobby. Most contact is made via email or penfriend-style mail conversation.

Radio

Tape trading was also in some respects an early precursor of podcasting, as the method could be used to redistribute radio programs to fans outside of a radio station's local broadcast area,

Radio Free Europe alongside its music.[2]

Video

A related phenomenon of

foreign films or pornography,[4] as well as episodes of professional wrestling and television game shows, which until the 1970s were routinely destroyed and thus very few episodes of most series from that era remain. The cult sc-fi comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was broadcast on the then-niche Comedy Central cable channel and was often unable to repeat episodes due to rights disputes over the movies they made fun of, contained an explicit instruction in its closing credits to "keep circulating the tapes" which helped the show build and maintain its fanbase.[8][9][10][11][12]

References

  1. ISBN 978-0-7619-4490-4
    .
  2. ^
    ISBN 9780195388947
    . p. 452.
  3. ^ a b "Community radio in post-apartheid South Africa: The case of Bush Radio in Cape Town" Archived April 10, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Transformations, February 2005.
  4. ^ a b "Tale Of The Tape Trading". Underground Film Journal, October 25, 2008.
  5. ^ "The story of grindcore: "This isn't metal, it isn't punk, I don't know whatthe f**k these guys are doing""|Louder
  6. ^ Metallica, how could you?|Salon.com
  7. ISBN 9781844491513
    . p. 162.
  8. ^ Adams, Erik (November 27, 2013). "Twenty-five years on, there's reason to keep MST3K circulating". The A.V. Club. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  9. ^ It's the law! on mst3kinfo.com
  10. ^ Keep Circulating the Tapes!|Rifftrax
  11. ^ Keep Circulating the Tapes —— The Best of MST3K – wright on film
  12. ^ Two of the "lost episodes" of MST3K have been found|AV Club
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tape_trading&oldid=1169616057"