Analogue Appreciation

Featured Image: Joseph Coke and Nicola Cutts

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t immediately notice what makes the café on the first floor of Afflecks odd. Past the indoor market’s foliage of vintage clothes and bohemia, Talking Heads’ ‘Pulled Up’ blasts through an amplifier. An old-fashioned CRT television plays a VHS of some grungy and forgotten music video from the ‘90s. The smell of black coffee drags you through each era of tapes, pop, rock, blues – the list goes on – across the shelves. And then you notice it: the rows are stocked entirely with cassette tapes. This place is Mars Tapes, ‘the last cassette store in the UK.’

Tangible pastimes are on the up in recent years. According to Music Week, cassette sales rose by 204.7% in the first quarter of 2025; Google Trends shows 160% more searches for the term “analogue hobbies”; social media feeds are full of “grandma” interests like sewing, knitting and crosswords; and people are ditching streaming platforms for DVDs and Blu-rays. In an age where everything is available at the push of a digital button, Manchester has become something of a home to analogue appreciators with a smattering of physical proprietors in the Northern Quarter alone.

Mars Tapes was recently converted into a tape listening café where its black and white floor leads to Giorgio Carbone, co-director of Sour Grapes Records. He sits behind the counter, searching for more music to supply to his cassette-loving customers, and speaks plainly about the revival of cassettes. “Young people don’t really know how to use cassettes, which is very interesting and fascinating. But it’s nice to see that they’re curious about how they work and they want to collect them,” he says.

Rachel, a customer and tourist from the USA, holds a plastic bag of freshly-purchased tapes of Miles Davis, Mariah Carey and The Cure. “My first ever music was on tape because I grew up in the 80s and it’s kind of coming back,” says the 45-year-old, sharing why she’s listening to music through a Walkman in 2026.

Carbone notes that Mars Tapes’ clientele has shifted further away from Rachel’s age group. “At the start, our main customers were mainly the older generation but now we see way more young people getting into cassettes and buying Walkmans and asking questions about them.”

Around the corner on Dale Street, Wren flicks through the pages of a new Punisher comic inside the store Travelling Man. “Marvel started a new series this year, and I’ve been coming in waiting for this next issue,” he says. The 23-year-old is an avid comic reader after ditching his tablet for reading. “When my iPad broke I lost all my digital comics and I suddenly realised how easy it is to lose the things you love to read, so I started collecting them physically.”

The ceiling of Travelling Man is draped in Pokémon bunting, the shelves piled with craft paint for figurine building kits. Bookcase after bookcase is filled with manga. Staff member Matt has noticed how important these niche physical forms of entertainment are for the local community. “You’ve got to have communities where people feel safe to come, whether it’s just to find people who have the same hobbies or whether they’re wanting to come and find a place to play Warhammer,” he says.

Another stone’s throw away on Dale Street is the Real Camera Company – a photography shop that opened in 2001. Old lightbox advertisements for Nikon and Leica sit in the window. Inside, the employees Jason, Joe and Jem are hunched over their workstations, inundated with tasks as more business comes in.

“Our film sales are very good,” says general manager Chris Hayton. “A few years ago, we struggled to get film. Now there’s lots of people coming in.”

Hayton estimates there are around 1,000 film cameras in the store, and a wall of them towers behind him as he speaks about the rise of analogue appreciation. “I think a lot of hobbies have become a lot more popular due to things like social media feeding peoples’ interests and being able to share and talk about it more.” Hayton estimates roughly 80% of his customers are under 30-years-old, and he puts the popularity of film photography down to the same factors that have led the vinyl revival: “There’s always a nostalgia aspect. People like tangible items. Cameras feel nicer than just using your phone,” says Hayton.

Clearly, the return of analogue hobbies is more than a trend, it reflects the younger generation’s desire to slow down and create rather than consume, to reconnect with the physical world and reject digital influences while taking a moment to pause in a world that rarely allows a moment to pass.

Back in the camera shop, Hayton believes that it’s the sensorial experience which draws so many people towards tangible hobbies. “There’s a manual handling and mechanical aspect,” he explains. “You don’t have instant gratification because you don’t see your pictures. But you might have the gratification of actually using the camera.”