It is true that worldwide production and demand for audio cassettes, and for the recorders, are in decline in most industrialised countries. However, in some markets, like in Latin America, the Middle East, China and Southeast Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe, and India, there is plenty of room for growth.
   We can easily expect the worldwide cassette market to co-exist with optical formats for the next five to seven years. There is an enormous populations of cassette players in the world and it would be unrealistic to expect the cassette configuration to disappear.
   While the music industry thinks and talks about CDs, 

not as rapidly as musicassette demands. In Europe, including Russia and the Eastern European countries, blank audiocassette demands fell about 10% in 2001, to 545 million C-60 equivalents. Musicassette demands, atleast those produced legally, were down by 20.5%, according to Magnetic Media Information Services.
   Audiocassettes are still being produced in significant quantities in Japan. The drop in audiocassette sales has recently bottomed out with production for 2000 totaling 17.6 million, representing 3% of the entire music market in Japan, according to MMIS.
   In North America, by the end of 2001, only one signific-

CD-ROM, DVDs and optical multimedia technologies, cassettes, quietly and without much hoopla, remain today’s choice among millions of consumers.
   While optical technologies and direct media access loom in the forefront of the new century, the bottom-line is that cassette audio duplicating is still the most cost-effective (manufacturing) method of information-gathering, entertainment-providing for consumers.
   Cassettes, considered the older technology of the industry, are alive and far from being extinct. There are reasons to fret about the future of the cassette, but so are there reasons for optimism and excitement.
   R.I.P. cassettes? No way! The cassette may be low-tech, but it grudgingly hangs on.
SALIANT FACTS ON THE AUDIOCASSETTE
   The audiocassette has been around for decades, but sales of licensed prerecorded 

ant manufacturer of audiocassette tape remained
active-Auriga-Aurex in Mexico City. Much
the same holds true in Western Eu-
rope, where EMTEC Mag-
netics is the only
major Euro-
pean 

cassettes have sharply declined over the past decade, according to the IFPI. In 1991, music cassette sales were 1.49 billion units, representing 52% of all sales worldwide. By 2000, these figures had fallen to 800.9 million and

company still producing audiocassette tape. Japanese producers have by and large ceased production in Japan. Most of the audiocassette tape manufactured in 2001 was produced in Asia. nn

 23%. The biggest market for music cassettes is Asia, which represents 48% of all sales.
   In the United States, spoken word cassettes are still the dominant format, although CDs have gained popularity. Spoken word cassettes hit 801 million units in the U.S. in 2001, and is increasing about 10-12% a year, according to the Audio Publishers Association. U.S. licensed music cassettes are at 76 million in 2000, compared to 366.4 million in the peak year of 1992, according to the RIAA.
   The blank audiocassette market continues to decline each year, but