So, hello everyone - or anyone - and welcome to the Kraftwerk cassettes blog.

For whatever reason, I decided to make a blog for Kraftwerk cassettes. It's possibly a place to keep track of my own collection, or just somewhere to brag without bothering my mother and/or FB friend list? 

I started collecting Kraftwerk cassettes a few years ago. I had previously bought some cassette singles, and had a couple to listen to in the car, back in the days when cars had cassette players, but recently I've been collecting international Kraftwerk items, simply for the design. In the 70s and 80s, many countries had different design for their releases, and this is true of cassettes too, so it made sense to try and collect them as well (-at least, as much 'sense' as collecting anything, that is - I do know that all the music is on youtube, before you ask!) Cassettes also have the design "feature" that they're of a more rectangular shape. Most cassettes appear to have been issued with artwork that was based on the LP, which of course was nearly square. This presented the design departments of record companies across many nations with a problem - how to adapt the LP cover into a cassette cover? And solutions were often very different from one place to another, which makes it interesting to look at in retrospect! Some countries would simply put the square design on the front, surrounded by some white spaces. Sometimes, you'd get the band name, album title and even tracklist in that extra space, sometimes, they would repeat features of design in those spaces, and sometimes, they would zoom in on the LP cover, even cutting parts of the original record sleeve - Cassette singles for Tour De France from 1983 would have just three band members cycling on the front!

Cassettes were normally seen as the "little brother" of vinyl LPs - often slightly cheaper, smaller and more convenient, and arguably not so great for sound quality - at least in the 70s. They were to use in the car, more to listen to and use than to build a big serious collection of... Which adds to their collectibility these days, since they were a sort of disposable item (everything is relative, but still), and didn't enjoy that big revival that records have in recent years, cassettes may often be harder to find.

There's a smaller collector community, too - which can be a good thing, because if you're lucky, you can pick up stuff at pretty good prices! Like I said, I've only collected cassettes in recent years, but I've managed to acquire nice collection of items. 

Which brings me back to the contents of this blog. I'm a collector. Among many things, I collect Kraftwerk cassettes. I plan to present many different releases here from all over the world, and I hope it will be of interest to you, the viewer.

Thanks for checking my blog, hope you come back soon, and feel free to contact me or leave comments.