Honestly, I don't get the whole insistence on the tape format thing. I uphold its use as a music making--and specifically, manipulation technique--tool for artists. When I purchase music, I expect to hear what the artist intended: an honest representation of the master recording.
If you want as an artist to add tape hiss to a recording, well, then, record the audio after duplicating to a cassette as a final task. If you believe I will pay "more attention" by sitting in front of a stereo for the length of your composition, you're wrong. The walkman was developed a generation or more ago. The ability to record to a digital format for the layman is very real today.
As an admirer of music and artistic endeavor, please don't put unnecessary issues in my way to experiencing the result of your expression. I am not against the tape format as a method of delivery as such; however, I have come across far too many sub-par duplications to respect the format. The US, perhaps, has a particular problem with this. Foreign releases / labels have never (yet?) posed an issue in this regard. US labels / acts have come through my hands in the last year with plenty of problems... Poor physical cassettes, poor dubbing, a blank side. It is enough to sour me on the medium. Add on top of this the issue of buying a reliable, quality tape deck in 2018, and it is fully frustrating for someone that just wants to listen to the artists' creation with fidelity to their intended work.
A CD has accuracy of representation on its side. In the grand scheme of things, though, it is simply a physical archival format for digital information. Hell, how many "analogue" masters are truly digital information? i.e. DAT How many vinyl recordings are produced from digital files? How many cassettes are professionally duplicated at the plant from digital recordings? For the "true believers" going into the future, I expect to eventually see talk of the superiority of 24-bit--or 32-bit or 64-bit--digital files. The CD standard format is 41,100 sample rate and 16-bit encoding. Bandcamp already offers larger files. Eventually, of course, you have to recon with what is truly distinguishable to the human ear.
One person who is wise to this whole debate, I would argue, is Tom Ellard (i.e. Severed Heads). On his last physical release, he sold a business card USB with physical artwork and an object. It was offered through Bandcamp, and the purchaser instantly received the digital file. The USB provides a physical archive (much like a CD) with various configurations. For example, a single track in .WAV and FLAC, that single composition divided into "songs" in MP3 format... that kind of variety.
Looking forward, I would encourage labels to consider their options. For example, I would love to see a digital download label that also offered physical artwork as an added option. Essentially, that is what CDs are now. The six panel digipak with full color booklet of images and lyrics accompanying the CON-DOM CD on Malignant? That is worth something to me... more than the piece of plastic digital information called a CD. I downloaded that to my computer upon purchase on Bandcamp and haven't ever touched the CD.
