Fans of The Prodigy are sincerely old school after giving the UK techno band a number one cassette during 2018 and by year’s end the third biggest selling cassette of 2018.
‘No Tourists’, the latest album from The Prodigy was available in various formats including cassette and the fans bought it.
“Our fan-base buys a lot of vinyl. In the UK, even cassettes have come back. We were the third biggest selling act on cassette last year,” Liam Howlett tells Noise11.com.
Despite streaming dominating music consumption today, Liam’s says The Prodigy fans are maintaining their old habits. “When you talk about cassette you are listening to something from start to finish, firstly one side and then the other side. It’s such as a great thing, a cassette. People forget about that. Its old school and its got a certain feel to it. Vinyl has come back too and a that of that is people just wanting something physical they can hold. It is so much better than a CD. CDs are really non-existent anymore. People like vinyl. We seem to be a band people like that have the vinyl with”.
While the music industry, especially the pop music industry is now focused on single track releases Liam says the album format is a priority for The Prodigy. “I always write and album as an album even though people don’t listen to them like that anymore. I like albums but I might pick off one track. That doesn’t stop me writing an album as a thing someone can pickup and play from track one to 10”.
He says he puts the album together like a live show. “The way I get the sequencing is basically like a live set,” Liam says. “It is important to us as a band and we are never going to stop thinking that way. It’s the way it works for us and I think there are a lot of bands that think like us. Otherwise its just a lot of songs on an album. I think most bands who write albums have to think of it as something from beginning to end even if people don’t think like that. It is still important to us”.
According to the UK’s The Official Top 40 Cassette Chart of 2018, The Prodigy ‘No Tourists’ came in at number three behind 1. The 1975 – ‘A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ and 2. Kylie Minogue ‘Golden’.
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