Cassettes have a versatile DIY aesthetic about them: you could record all your sources off radio, TV or CD, sample it into a synth, build up and trade mixtapes,

Cassettes have a versatile DIY aesthetic about them: you could record all your sources off radio, TV or CD, sample it into a synth, build up and trade mixtapes, and so on. It isn't just a format for pre-recorded, and digital doesn't really do the same thing since the result of recording into digital is neatly encoded and organized files.