Abstract: A plate spring for tape cassettes advantageously consists of two long and two short spring arms whose shapes and dimensions are optimized to achieve minimum wastage of material during punching from a sheet-metal strip. The length of the fastening arms is preferably about the same as the width of the ends of the long spring arms or less or at most 1.5 times the width. The spring can be used for all types of tape cassettes, regardless of whether they contain magnetic tape, film or other recording media. A tape cassette possesses a plate spring which has this form and is fastened by welding.