Apparently-official cassette versions of albums that you might have thought only ever existed on CD, download or hipster-vinyl variants, via The Dapper Bastard:

Hey, you know what? Kids today! They're buying cassettes like they're coming back into fashion.

That's what the BBC say, anyway:

One in 10 young people has bought a music cassette tape in the last month, a new survey done to coincide with Record Store Day suggests.

The research suggests that physical formats are still more popular than digital downloads.

In the last year, 57% of the people surveyed had bought a CD, while 39% had purchased an MP3 download.

In the last month.

There's just over four million 20-24 year olds in the UK, so that would imply 400,000 cassettes sold each month just to that proportion of the 18-24 year old age group. Let's be generous and assume 18 & 19 year olds bought no cassettes at all, and that for the other 11 months of the year, none of this age group bought any cassettes.

How does this figure fit with cassette sales?

Well, we know that in 2013, album sales on media other than CD, vinyl or digital download accounted for just 73,000 sales. That's cassettes, but also box sets of vinyl, DVD Audio and other strange beasts. But let's pretend that it's all tape, shall we?

Ah, but for singles, the figure for 'others' is six million or so. Could that be where all these cassette purchases are hidden?

Probably not - the other figure for 2012 was nearly four and a half million, and we know just 604 of those were cassingles. Even if we - again generously - assume a 100-fold increase in cassette single sales between 2012 and 2013, that's 60,400 sales.

So, even on the most generous and lax granting of licence, and over-estimating like we're Nigel Farage putting in his office running costs, we make that 133,000 cassettes sold in 2013.

So, for the Record Store Day figures to hold up, we're going to have to believe that a thin sliver of the national demographic suddenly bought four times as many tapes in March 2014 as the entire population in the whole of 2013 on the loosest possible reading of the figures.

In other words: this is absolute tock-widdle, and the BBC should be ashamed of running it as fact. But not as ashamed as Record Store Day should be of putting out such ramtwaddle.

After all...

If 1 in 10 "young people" bought a cassette last year, Record Store Day wouldn't exist. If you believe that survey you are a prize chump.

— Hugh Platt (@HughDoVoodoo) April 16, 2014

An email arrives, suggesting I might want to listen to a thing. That happens a lot, but the thing is a cassette/digital album from Brighton. And they describe themselves like this:

I never know how to describe ourselves other than pop-noise and we love the Velvet Underground. The tape is super lo-fi and was recorded on 4 track over an old Jim Reeves cassette by Tom House from Charlottefield.

Obviously, recording over Jim Reeves will add the sound of distant drums to your final mix.

It all ended up sounding like this:

You don't have to go with the tape version, but you should at least make sure you buy the demo in some format, because it will improve your life. Guaranteed.

Slum Of Legs. A buzzy, fuzzy wake-up sound. Yesyesyes.

Viv Albertine is going to close the circle on the Slits by releasing one last record:

Writing on Twitter, Albertine said: "Me and Tessa are going to release last ever Slits song 'Coulda Shoulda Woulda' from 1981 on cassette. We will hand draw covers. A healing thing."

Might be worth trying to track down one of those last few tape walkmans to have something to play it on.

Sky Larkin are poised to release a C60 - yes, a tape - with the following tracklisting:

Side A

01. Antibodies.
02. These are the Bones of Traits and Traitors.
03. LtoR.
04. Matador (Lull’s Channel Switch Remix).
05. Antibodies (J.Xaverre Remix).
06. Keepsakes (Cereal Remix).

Side B
01. Hark to Heart; A Word In Your Shell About Antibodies and Land Art. By Katie Harkin
02. Ten Minutes. By Doug Adams
03. Real Attempts at Internet Dating. by Nestor Matthews

It's all released on 11th May, but if you're not sure if you want to have to dig out the walkman, here's a sample: Matador, downloadable in glorious mp3.

Boing Boing Gadgets reports on a market where the cassette is still king - prisons:

At long last, it seems the music industry has finally won its battle against copyright theft: a new survey has discovered that taping music off the radio has almost entirely been eradicated.

There's little else for the industry to be cheered by, though, in the University of Hertfordshire conducted for Fergal Sharkey's lot, the British Music Rights body:

Actually, if only almost half of the collection isn't free, then haven't these people paid for the majority of the music?

And it shouldn't be forgotten that 'not paying for' music isn't quite the same thing as 'obtaining illegally'. Preview mp3s, free tracks, try-before-you-buy offerings - there's lots of ways to fill an mp3 player without breaking the rules.

Having said which, they break the rules:

Personally, if the average number of tracks in the respondent's collection was 1,700, we'd be tempted to play down the importance of people claiming to bag 5,000 tracks a month. And, more importantly, logic suggests that someone adding 60,000 tracks to their music player every year isn't going to be listening to them all - so they hardly represent lost sales of music.

British Music Rights is a little less swivel-eyed than the BPI, so they're able to see the positive aspects of the survey:

Naturally, you wouldn't expect a rights-fixated body to start from any other position than to assume that there must be value involved - nobody who currently earns a crust from the music industry is going to ask the awkward and alarming question of if there is any financial value in having people listen to your music on an MP3 player - and until someone does, most of these surveys are missing the point somewhat.

We're also a little puzzled by the first bullet point in the press release:

How, exactly, does one set about proving that scientifically - and if it's just a gut feeling, then does it really have any place in this academic paper? I have nothing against 14 to 24 year-olds, but I seriously doubt if they could be loving music any more than my generation did. Especially since we had less other distractions to lavish our affections on.

We're slightly dubious about the claims that Currys decision to stop stocking cassettes is the official end of the road for the tape, because Currys do have a bit of form for announcing that it's taking some piece of technology or other off its shelves, so there's a haunting feeling this is just a bit of PR to take advantage of a quiet news period. But even so, with Woolworths apparently having dropped them too (to be honest, it's more surprising to hear that Woolworths is still going than that they're not selling tapes), it does feel like the end of an era. Currys managing director Peter Keenan tries to be gentle at this difficult time:

Yes, who wouldn't remember "with fondness" their favourite tape being chewed to death. It's like having a chuckle over scratching your best single.