Grail Tape: Cassette ID

Point your phone at any cassette — say it, type it, photograph it, or play it — and know it in seconds. Then check the edition, spot dubs, and track every play.

Point your phone at any cassette and know it in seconds — then track every play and show off your shelf. Grail Tape is the companion for the whole cassette life: find it, learn it, play it, follow what you listen to, and share it. A catalog of 428,000 cassette releases ships inside the app, so core searches come back instantly — and your photos, voice, and audio never leave your phone.

IDENTIFY IN SECONDS — four ways in • Say it — speak the artist, album, or catalog number, even in a noisy shop. • Type it — search anything you can read off the J-card. • Photograph it — point at the J-card or shell; it reads the text on-device with Apple Vision. • Play it — let the app listen to a track that's playing. • (Plus barcode — scan the J-card UPC for a one-tap lookup.) All on-device. Results in milliseconds.

KNOW YOUR EDITION Cassettes aren't pressed — they're duplicated, and editions differ: a first issue, a club edition, a foreign variant, and a late reissue can be worlds apart. Grail Tape shows which edition you're holding and how it sits among every other edition of the same album — by era, country, and markers — with a rarity read built on collector scarcity: how many want a tape versus how many own one. Albums that only ever came out on cassette are flagged as the format's true grails.

SPOT DUBS AND FAKES The classic tells, as a checklist: does the catalog number moulded into the shell match the J-card? Are the write-protect tabs punched out? (Commercial tapes shipped with them removed — intact tabs mean a dubbed blank.) Does the barcode fit the claimed era? Is the J-card too crisp for its age? (For entertainment — not authentication.)

LEARN THE FORMAT A built-in tape anatomy glossary: J-card, spine, shell imprint, write-protect tabs, Dolby NR, chrome vs. normal bias, real-time duplication — plain definitions and why each matters for identification.

PLAY & TRACK Press play and Grail Tape follows along, track by track. Connect Last.fm and your tape plays join your streaming scrobbles in one place — see what you actually listen to, across formats. Log your deck and track tape-head hours — know when it's time to clean or service.

TAPE-ERA CHALLENGES Goals from the format's history: Golden Age of Tape (the most-issued cassette albums of 1985–2002), Tape Revival (the modern scene, 2012 to now), and Cassette-Only Grails.

KNOW YOUR COLLECTION Sync the cassette slice of your Discogs collection and see what your shelf is worth, which tapes are grails, what you own but never play, and what to chase next.

SHARE YOUR COLLECTION Turn your shelf into a handsome cover-grid card — clean, or with your collection stats — themed to match the app and ready to share anywhere.

ON-DEVICE BY DESIGN No account required. Your photos, your voice, and your audio are processed on your phone and never uploaded. The catalog ships inside the app, so core search is instant and private. (Live release data, prices, and cover art are fetched from Discogs, MusicBrainz, the Cover Art Archive, and Last.fm when you look beyond the bundled catalog.)

— — — FREE: identify by voice, text, photo, sound, or barcode · on-device catalog · basic edition info · play & track with Last.fm · shareable collection cards — plus 14 days of full Grail Member access when you start.

GRAIL MEMBER: every edition of every album · edition deep-dives & comparison · dub & fake checklists · cassette-only grail flags · challenge breakdowns · seasonal badges.

Prices, edition details, and notes are collector reference offered for entertainment — not a guarantee, appraisal, or authentication. Always do your own research before buying or selling.

Release data from Discogs · metadata from MusicBrainz · cover art from Cover Art Archive · listening from Last.fm. Voice, photos, and audio are processed on-device and never uploaded.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://grailvinyl.app/grailtape/privacy