More and more people now have recording equipment of high quality. The younger generation produces music at home and distributes it on cassettes through the mail. Those cassettes are duplicated again, ad infinitum. As digital cassettes become more widely available, every copy will be exactly like the master tape. Top actors read books on cassettes.
Every car has a cassette player.
Yet spoken books are not immensely popular. Writing and the Oral Tradition don't mix. More and more lectures are sold on cassettes, so joggers can listen to them on their walkmen. The Institute for Invisible Language produces the All Chemix Radio Series, a different approach to the old-fashioned radio play. It all started when Peter Flik sent a spoken letter to Willem de Ridder in Hollywood.