[coldtea]

>Why is this done? Tradition? Certainly it's an extra expense that releasing in pure digital format would not include -- and it's not like all the music is not mastered digitally now anyway -- nobody is mastering on tape and cutting and splicing....

Actually lots of artists master on tape.

What most don't do is track and mix on tape -- but there are some that do that too.

(and mastering doesn't involve "cutting" and "splicing" much -- that would be mixing).