You Have to Flip It

August numbers hit the group chat like weather: physical revenue up twenty-six percent in the first half, vinyl still climbing, CDs back like a joke that got tired of being a joke. Luminate says people are buying the object even when they don’t own the machine, and half the millennial CD buyers don’t have a player. Fine. That was never why I bought anything. You buy the thing so the night has a spine. Streaming pays the light bill. The cassette is what you put in the car when you don’t want some app picking the next one while you’re trying to talk.

Target’s exclusive colourway is not the story. The story is a shop on this coast that had a dead house bin in 2021 and now has a wait for the good 120s. Cassette plants that used to laugh at a two-hundred run. A vinyl queue that still takes months because the pressing plant is full of people who decided a file isn’t a copy you keep. Independent shops lost a little share to the big box this year. That’s the raid. The comeback is real, and so is the checkout button trying to wear it like a personality.

Buy the tape because you will flip it, and buy the 12 because you have to stand up. If your night this week starts with a file and ends with a sleeve on the kitchen table, that’s enough for me. Don’t let them turn it into a caption.