The cassette tape is making a tentative comeback as a Dutch factory gets a new lease of life, public broadcaster NOS writes.

Duplicase, the only remaining factory to produce cassette tapes in the Netherlands, has been saved by a renewed interest in non-digital ways of recording.

Sales have been going up slowly but steadily, and in 2017 new owner Thomas Baur, a former Philips technician and lover of old recording equipment, is expecting to shift some 20,000 tapes.

‘These are people who are music freaks and don’t want anything to do with mp3s and the rest of the digital industry. They were the ones who welcomed the comeback of vinyl and now they are embracing the cassette tape. People tell me: I want to be in on this too,’ Baur told NOS economics correspondent Jeroen Schutijser.

The cassette tape is taking on cult status, Schutijser writes. Justin Bieber, Kanye West and Jett Rebel have all released albums on tape in the Netherlands.

Baur hopes to introduce new and better quality tapes in the near future which, he says, calls for new cassette players too.

‘Manufacturers have to start taking this seriously. Cassette players a bi-product at the moment – a gadget – and they are a long way from offering the quality of the old top cassette players. But maybe this renewed interest will spur them on to make really good cassette players,’ Schutijser quotes him as saying.