Pink Floyd Rewinds Time With Dark Side Cassette Player

Pink Floyd is returning to cassette, although this time the batteries are rechargeable.French retro-audio specialist We Are Rewind has partnered with the band for a limited-edition version of its WE-001 portable cassette player, bundled with an exclusive cassette release of The Dark Side of the Moon.

The tape contains the album’s 50th anniversary remaster and, according to We Are Rewind, will not be available separately. That makes the package as much a Pink Floyd collectable as a piece of functional audio hardware, which is likely to be precisely the point.

By now, We Are Rewind has made something of a habit of turning its cassette products into physical-media collaborations. StereoNET has previously followed the colourful EDITH player, the Curtis GB-001 boombox and Freddie headphones, alongside limited WE-001 editions created with Elvis Presley, Duran Duran and Discogs.

What initially looked like a nostalgia-led hardware play is becoming something broader. The WE-001 now acts as a reusable platform for artists, albums and music brands looking to package physical media with something more substantial than another coloured-vinyl variant.

Pink Floyd may be its most obvious partner yet. Few records are as closely tied to the idea of the album as a complete physical object, from its prism artwork to its uninterrupted musical flow. The Dark Side of the Moon has also been issued and reissued in almost every format imaginable, so the cassette feels less like a strange detour than another turn around the sun.

The limited-edition player carries visual elements inspired by the album’s familiar artwork, including its prism and spectrum motif. It is effectively Any Colour You Like, provided those colours are refracted across a suitably dark aluminium cassette player.

Underneath the Pink Floyd treatment is the familiar WE-001 platform. The aluminium-bodied machine includes metal controls, Bluetooth 5.1 transmission for wireless headphones and speakers, a conventional 3.5mm headphone output and a built-in rechargeable battery rated for up to twelve hours of playback.

It also retains fast-forward and rewind controls, along with a line input that allows users to record their own mixtapes or voice recordings with a compatible microphone. We Are Rewind quotes an upgraded frequency response of 30Hz to 14.5kHz, within ±3dB, and says its headphone amplifier has been designed specifically around cassette playback.

The company describes the result as “true hi-fi sound”, although we would stop a little short of putting cassette on equal terms with modern lossless playback. The attraction here is not forensic resolution. It is the tactile process of loading a tape, pressing a physical button and hearing an album without skipping through it after thirty seconds.

That may sound like nostalgia speaking, but cassette sales continue to move in the right direction. UK sales reached 164,000 units during 2025, representing a 53 per cent year-on-year increase and the format’s strongest result in two decades. It remains a small market, certainly, but one with enough momentum to keep new players, artist editions and freshly manufactured tapes appearing.

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason still has considerable affection for the format, along with at least one serious cassette deck waiting on the shelf: 

I still have enormous affection for the cassette. It really was a major breakthrough, not only with the Sony Walkman but with some of the more upmarket recorders. I still have my Nakamichi on the shelf and look forward to testing it with the new The Dark Side of the Moon cassette.

Mason also wondered whether the next major edition might divide the album across a large collection of 78rpm discs. Given the number of Dark Side reissues already in circulation, we would not rule it out entirely.

We Are Rewind founder and CEO Romain Boudruche says the album’s continuous structure and ambitious production made it a natural fit for the company’s physical-media approach: 

To call The Dark Side of the Moon a classic album is an understatement. In many ways, it set the tone for what an album experience should be as a continuous piece of sonic art, but it also used state-of-the-art production techniques and sounds, which make it a true musical experience.

Streaming gives listeners almost everything immediately. A cassette asks for a little more Time. As for Money, the Pink Floyd x We Are Rewind package is available from 16 July 2026, priced at £159 | €179 | US$199. 

For more information visit We Are Rewind