Where did all those live indie cassette bootleg tapes go?

You remember....

Camden Market, or wherever. You'd go down and find gigs from the previous six months, along with the greats and general from history, all speed-duplicated onto C90 cassettes. You'd get that Carter tape cause you were there, and somebody would rate it eventually, a+ for 'nicked from the mixing desk' quality, down to E for 'recorded on someones walkman where the mic is attached to their lapel while the owner was in the moshpit or their mate forgets its there and talks all the way through"...

Anyway, does this even happen anymore?

CDr's would make it easier, the internet would make it simple but impossible to charge for....

Is that why it ended?

Remember them well and used to get a bunch of them back in the day. I would say there were a few reasons for their demise:

1. Trading standards officers used to swoop down on the traders, both at markets and at record fairs
2. They did get made as CDRs and you used to see a lot of them at fairs, but see 1
3. Dimeadozen and similar sites have basically plugged a lot of that need, shows get circulated on fan forums and suchlike

I was one of those tape regular Camden hounds and got to know a few of the sellers quite well, only yesterday I was actually thinking of one guy in particular, an American called Paul iirc who looked a bit like Chad Smith and who had a great selection of tapes that he mostly did himself. Trouble was he was pretty irregular in his appearances which was a shame as was the only guy that would recorded and sell stuff like Meat Puppets for instance.

Personally speaking, Dime itches the scratch pretty well for me and it's free of course.