4 ms·

Portability (also walkmen and boomboxes, not just car stereos), recording (copies, mixtapes, radio recordings), durability & price. You could loan someone a ta

Portability (also walkmen and boomboxes, not just car stereos), recording (copies, mixtapes, radio recordings), durability & price. You could loan someone a tape without worrying about scratches. You could make your own mixtape, which became a romantic trope and let people take creative part. Cassettes were usually cheaper than vinyl or CDs. Also, you could record your own tapes. I have tapes of me talking as a toddler. You could record a lecture or interview. There's a reason people still say "album" and "demo tape." Tapes could be produced in 1s and 10s. Vinyl presses had big minimum runs. So.. underground music happened on cassette tapes. I would flip it. Vinyl's only advantage was sound quality (assuming the needle was sharp and the record unscratched). Cassetes had every other advantage. There's a reason they were so popular well into the cd age.

johnchristopher 8y ago
OP said all that: > Portability (also walkmen and boomboxes, not just car stereos), recording (copies, mixtapes, radio recordings), durability & price. And the question remains: > what's the point in bringing them back?
- dalbasal 8y ago
  Ah.. well the point is obviously not that they're objectively better. They're a collectible souvenir.
Symbiote 8y ago
Cassette tapes also lost that advantage around 2000, when CD-Rs became cheap — cheaper than tapes ever were. Some friends in unknown bands produced ~100 CD-Rs of their music and left them lying around bars and nightclubs. That cost £20 and a lot of time spent swapping CDs at the computer.
- Udik 8y ago
  True. But I've always found cds awful from a UX point of view. Delicate, needed to be kept in their box and handled with care to avoid fingerprints. And it was sometimes tricky to get them out of their boxes, maybe with one hand while driving. While I used to have tapes scattered around the car, just push a button, eject it and throw it anywhere, pick another, push it in. Perfect format.
sacado2 8y ago
Back then, yes, there's a reason they were so popular. But nowadays? What do they bring?
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  Novelty.
  - Udik 8y ago
    It's so old it's new.
johnnycab 8y ago
>Portability (also walkmen and boomboxes, not just car stereos), recording (copies, mixtapes, radio recordings), durability & price. You could loan someone a tape without worrying about scratches. >You could make your own mixtape, which became a romantic trope and let people take creative part. Whilst I agree, that in absence of any real alternatives, the Compact Cassette had these features/qualities that made them very convenient and ubiquitous. However, it was an inferior medium as they were a pain to look after i.e. if you left them near unshielded speakers or in the car on hot days or try and avoid having the player chew it up, then spend hours trying to spool it back with a pencil, splicing the tape etc. There was also the Zen of Cassette Player Maintenance with the 'head-cleaning' routine.. If I had to bring back a format, it would be the MiniDisc (versus the superior DAT), not only for the nostalgic element but also for it's sheer versatility and durability.

johnchristopher 8y ago

OP said all that: > Portability (also walkmen and boomboxes, not just car stereos), recording (copies, mixtapes, radio recordings), durability & price. And the question remains: > what's the point in bringing them back?

dalbasal 8y ago
Ah.. well the point is obviously not that they're objectively better. They're a collectible souvenir.

Symbiote 8y ago

Cassette tapes also lost that advantage around 2000, when CD-Rs became cheap — cheaper than tapes ever were. Some friends in unknown bands produced ~100 CD-Rs of their music and left them lying around bars and nightclubs. That cost £20 and a lot of time spent swapping CDs at the computer.

Udik 8y ago
True. But I've always found cds awful from a UX point of view. Delicate, needed to be kept in their box and handled with care to avoid fingerprints. And it was sometimes tricky to get them out of their boxes, maybe with one hand while driving. While I used to have tapes scattered around the car, just push a button, eject it and throw it anywhere, pick another, push it in. Perfect format.

sacado2 8y ago

Back then, yes, there's a reason they were so popular. But nowadays? What do they bring?

barbecue_sauce 8y ago
Novelty.
- Udik 8y ago
  It's so old it's new.

johnnycab 8y ago

>Portability (also walkmen and boomboxes, not just car stereos), recording (copies, mixtapes, radio recordings), durability & price. You could loan someone a tape without worrying about scratches. >You could make your own mixtape, which became a romantic trope and let people take creative part. Whilst I agree, that in absence of any real alternatives, the Compact Cassette had these features/qualities that made them very convenient and ubiquitous. However, it was an inferior medium as they were a pain to look after i.e. if you left them near unshielded speakers or in the car on hot days or try and avoid having the player chew it up, then spend hours trying to spool it back with a pencil, splicing the tape etc. There was also the Zen of Cassette Player Maintenance with the 'head-cleaning' routine.. If I had to bring back a format, it would be the MiniDisc (versus the superior DAT), not only for the nostalgic element but also for it's sheer versatility and durability.