"Home Taping Is Killing Music" was a slogan used in the 1980s by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to discourage people from copying music onto cassette tapes. The music industry feared that the rise of home recording—where people would tape songs from the radio or copy vinyl records onto blank cassettes—would lead to lost sales and harm artists and record labels.
Why does it appear on records?
‘Home Taping is Killing Music’ was a slogan coined by the British Phonographic Industry, arising in the early 1980s, when cassette recorders began to rise in popularity.
It was officially launched as an anti-copyright infringement campaign in 1981, adding ‘and it’s illegal’ to the slogan.
The British Phonographic Industry feared that because cassette recorders made it easy for the general public to record music from the radio onto cassettes, it would cause a rapid decline in record sales.
To give the slogan the eye-catching nature a campaign needs to effectively run, the slogan was accompanied by a logo akin to a Jolly Rodger, which showed a silhouette of a cassette tape, with two crossed bones underneath.
Where can the slogan be found?
Typically, on most vinyl records released in the early 1980s, the slogan and logo can be found, either on the outer sleeve, by the copyright information, or on the inner sleeve, where it was generally bigger, which hypothetically made it harder to ignore.
The logo and slogan was also printed onto some cassette tapes, to attempt to quell the problem further.
But people ignored it…
This campaign, while it was relatively widespread, never really gained much traction. The British Phonographic Industry attempted to levy a tax on blank cassettes to recuperate the loss of sales of vinyl and cassettes, however, it never got off the ground, especially since the UK’s economy was declining and the cost of cassettes had more than doubled between 1975 and 1981.
Additionally, what people recorded onto blank cassettes could never truly be regulated.
People even took offence...
Another reason for the drop in sales of vinyl records and cassette tapes at the time of this campaign was the fact that it blamed the customers for the loss of sales. Record labels’ accusatory stance left many music fans feeling bitter, and therefore, home taping increased as an act of rebellion against the record labels. So really, this campaign had the opposite of the desired effect.
For the public, home taping was never killing music; if anything, it was giving music a new life, allowing music to be shared and enjoyed by more people.
Why don’t we see this slogan anymore?
The main reason this campaign died out is that it simply didn’t work. It had the opposite effect, so it stopped being put into print.
In addition, soon after this campaign was started, we saw a rise in CDs, which gave people a whole new way to listen to music, without the inconvenience of snapped tapes and carrying around a pencil to wind a pulled tape back in!
CDs became the preferred option, so there was a dramatic fall in cases of home taping, therefore ,the purpose of the campaign was falling quickly out of relevance.
Anti-piracy campaigns still exist, but as we have moved into a more digital age of music, music copying is more commonly found online, which is where the campaigns can also be found.
Home Taping Slogans Found At Atlas Records:
This slogan is something we see on a daily basis, as a lot of our stock was released in the 1980s. It will often be seen on the plain inner sleeve of a record, which isn’t pictured on the website, but it can sometimes be found on the back of the record sleeves as well.
These slogans are a key part of music history, and we love digging into their story.
