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Tape trading is an unofficial method of distribution of musical or video content through the mail, which was prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Although most commonly used to distribute and publicize limited-release musical demo tapes in underground musical genres such as punk rock, Hardcore punk, and extreme metal, the system has also been used to distribute bootleg recordings of live concerts, recordings of radio broadcasts,Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. Oxford University Press, 2012. . p. 452. original radio-style programming by amateur broadcasters, "Community radio in post-apartheid South Africa: The case of Bush Radio in Cape Town" . Transformations, February 2005. and videotapes of underground films and pornography. "Tale Of The Tape Trading". Underground Film Journal, October 25, 2008.
The practice faded in prominence in the 2000s, as the rise of Internet technologies such as audio and video streaming, file sharing services and podcasting largely supplanted the need to mail out physical copies of recorded content. However, a smaller scale network of tape traders still exists as a sort of nostalgia hobby among fans of some musical genres.
The ad hoc system relied on a system of trust, meaning that tapes were swapped in a kind of honor system; those who did not subscribe to this ethos and received tapes without returning the favor accordingly would become known as 'rip-offs' or 'rip-off traders' and were regarded with scorn. Flyers advertising gigs, recordings and other merchandises for sale were often swapped in conjunction with tape trading. Music that had been licensed to record companies (therefore subject to copyright) and released in the format of Vinyl records, CD and MC (musicassette) was also pirated onto blank compact cassette medium and traded, although this was in infringement of both unofficial 'rules' of the network and actual copyright law itself.
Many traders would, unrequested, fill unused space on the C-60 and C-90 tapes of demos they compiled for fellow traders with local bands in which they were members, or acolytes of. This led to a musical cross-pollination between geographically diverse and disparate areas such as Scandinavia, USA and the UK and their own bands/scenes. One notable example of how initial contact through tape trading lent to this trend is in the case of Righteous Pigs guitarist Mitch Harris who hailed from Las Vegas and Birmingham's Mick Harris, drummer with Napalm Death (not related) who would later collaborate writing and recording music, Mitch Harris would eventually relocate to the UK for this purpose. "The story of grindcore: "This isn't metal, it isn't punk, I don't know whatthe f**k these guys are doing""|Louder The very nature of the system ensured that recordings would decrease in sound quality with each trade and would in extreme circumstance become almost unlistenable, although the advent of helped the preservation of sound quality of recordings throughout trades. The popularization of broadband internet and digital music in its various forms has led to music by unsigned acts being swapped electronically and therefore tape trading through the postal system is considered by most to be outdated. Metallica, how could you?|Salon.com
Heavy metal tape trading (notably black metal, death metal, doom metal) through the postal system is still in practice, but mainly as a nostalgic hobby. Most contact is made via email or penfriend-style mail conversation.
The cult sc-fi comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was broadcast on the then-niche Comedy Central cable channel and was often unable to repeat episodes due to rights disputes over the movies they made fun of, contained an explicit instruction in its closing credits to "keep circulating the tapes" which helped the show build and maintain its fanbase. It's the law! on mst3kinfo.com Keep Circulating the Tapes!|Rifftrax Keep Circulating the Tapes —— The Best of MST3K – wright on film Two of the "lost episodes" of MST3K have been found|AV Club
Independent wrestling events, foreign wrestling and C-shows from the WWE and WCW were often not archived as much as their mainstream wrestling shows and matches, even up to and during the late 1990s and early 2000s boom period. C-shows such as WWF Shotgun Saturday Night had several months worth of episodes that were considered lost media for decades before tape traders uploaded them to YouTube.
Some wrestlers, such as "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, encouraged fans to record the shows they were on as a way to both promote the company and to preserve the wrestlers' legacies. At this point in Williams' career, he had suffered an infamous injury and then appeared primarily on WWF B-shows and C-shows upon healing. In January 2000, Williams sought a new start in All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), where he was previously successful in the early 1990s and was the company's champion in 1994. In a promo right at the start of a syndicated edition of an AJPW pay-per-view, aired on September 2, 2000, Williams reflected negatively about the WWF and the style at the time, then speaking about his future in AJPW, "Don't turn off that TV. Don't turn off your VCR tape. Start watching All Japan. New members. New faces. And the champion of the world, Triple Crown Championship. I, this year, will be Triple Crown Champion, Steve 'Dr. Death' Williams."
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