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Cassettes were also the first and last audio storage medium where mainstream consumers could purchase an affordable, ready-made appliance for home listening tha

Cassettes were also the first and last audio storage medium where mainstream consumers could purchase an affordable, ready-made appliance for home listening that could also act as an audio editing system, recording the result onto another cassette. This is what enabled mixtapes. With formats that came later, CD-recording remained expensive until personal computers were becoming widespread, and while CDs could be ripped or mp3s could be remixed on computers, you needed software that was often commercial and rarely included. Digital audio then de-emphasized removable storage, re-introducing friction between exchanging music and listening to it on a portable player. Nowadays, most music exchange happens online, but the appeal of exchanging music in person endures even for generations that grew up with the Internet. Cassettes had excellent usability for sharing: ease of duplication, ease of remixing, more rugged than vinyl, easier to hold than CDs, and maintaining its playback position at rest [1]. Couple that with authentic nostalgia, or yearning for an aesthetic and mood of times past. While the vinyl revival is centered around the deliberate experience of browsing, playback, and large-size album art, like enjoying an artisanal product made by skilled craftsmen, cassette revival celebrates the versatility of the format, its lack of restrictions, the opportunities for creativity, and its physicality on a very human scale. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20332150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20332150

OrgNet 7y ago
how do you like rewind and seeking capabilities?
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  Most other media has terrible UI for rewind, fast forward and seek compared to tape, whether audio or VHS. Digital video and audio in particular, nearly never have workable (live playback) rewind and fast forward.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    Use a real video player from anywhere in 2002 or so onward, e.g. mplayer, xine, vlc, Media Player Classic (mplayer is the fastest), with a real video file on your local disk. Fast forward and rewind are nearly instantaneous. For audio, look up a really old program called alsaplayer that could play forward, backward and at any speed. It's not "digital" that makes rewinding and fast forwarding crap on crap devices and services, it's the lack of care for user experience.
    - namibj 7y ago
      Or use mpv. It even works with URLs, supporting youtube-dl to handle many streaming sites.
      - sp332 7y ago
        VLC also supports this, if you Open Network Stream. It's funny they were included in this list, because they are strongly against including a good rewind feature. Modern video codecs refer back to previous frames a lot, so it has to be decoded forwards. It would take a ton of RAM to keep the decoded frame data for "previous" frames so you could play them in reverse. With some video files you won't notice a delay while skipping around, but some you will.
- nosuchthing 7y ago
  It's slower than random access mediums, but tapes have built in memory for track location which is nice when you're listening to something (in the car) and want to switch devices and carry on from your last listening point (books on tape).
scarface74 7y ago
If I recall correctly, I had a $400 HP Pavilion with a CD-RW around 2000 and used CoolEdit Pro ($20) to create fitness mixes. I used it to cross fade and beat match. CoolEdit was since bought by Adobe and is now Adobe Audition. But if all you wanted to do was create mix CDs. While not especially cheap, parallel port CD writers were available for PCs for less than $300 by 1999 and bundled with Eazy CD Creator. This was also around the time where ISPs were giving away PCs to sign up for dial up.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Cheap, yes. But horribly unreliable. Underruns and other mysterious errors were so common that the failed burns gave us the notion of using compact discs as drink coasters. Even after the transition from parallel port to internal burners, disc burning was largely a crapshoot.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    By 1998, I was using an HP parallel port CD writer with a Gateway Solo laptop. By then, they were decently reliable. I don’t remember getting any bad CDs.
Nition 7y ago
The easy recordability of cassette tapes had another bonus. Both tapes and records wear out a little each time you listen to them. But you could buy a record and dub it onto a tape, then listen to the tape. If you eventually wore out the tape, you still had the original record with only one playthough on it, so you could always dub it onto another tape. It's nice these days being able to listen to music and not simultaneously feel like you're treading a slow path to destroying the music you're hearing.
- seandougall 7y ago
  Agreed. I had a mixtape that my wife made for me back when we were dating in the late ‘90s, and it stayed on loop in my car tape player for years. To this day, my pitch memory of those songs is still about a half step flat.
Godel_unicode 7y ago
How many cassettes do you own? When was the last time you gave someone a cassette? I bet it's been over a decade, because cassettes suck. The backups are made in linear time, you can only share them with someone who is physically next to you, it's a giant pain to edit cassettes at a specific point in time, mashups are impossible because you have to have very expensive analog equipment to beat match, and pitch shift is then a problem. If you want to listen to a custom playlist you have to have thought of that well in advance, and you can only have as many as you have room for bulky cassettes. There's a reason nobody has a cassette deck anymore. It's not some conspiracy, and it's not because the kids don't understand. It's because they aren't very good.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  How many cassettes do you own? None. But my wife has over 200; many of them new releases in the last two years. When was the last time you gave someone a cassette? Last week when I recorded one of the albums my wife bought on iTunes onto a blank tape so she could listen to it on her tape player in the backyard. The backups are made in linear time So what? It's not like you have to sit there and turn the spindles. You push a button and walk away for an hour or a day or whatever and when you come back it's done. Also, many tape decks duplicate at double speed. you can only share them with someone who is physically next to you Again, so what? What's so horrible about sharing with actual friends instead of pretend internet friends? it's a giant pain to edit cassettes at a specific point in time, mashups are impossible because you have to have very expensive analog equipment to beat match, and pitch shift is then a problem Using the incorrect tool for a specific job doesn't mean the tool sucks. A cassette isn't a 24-track studio recorder. It's music for the masses. you can only have as many as you have room for bulky cassettes. Being able to touch something is a feature, not a bug. Nobody ever lost their entire cassette music collection because of a hard drive crash or a virus or a bad SSD chip or a power surge. There's a reason nobody has a cassette deck anymore. And by "nobody," you mean you. If nobody wants tape decks, then why are new ones still being manufactured? The director or IT for the multi-billion dollar company for which I work has a tape deck and a CD/MP3 player in her car. She uses tapes because they can take the abuse of an automotive environment better than digital media. And if the tape starts to wear, she just records a new copy. It's because they aren't very good. They are very good for the purpose for which they were created. Just because that purpose does not fit into your mindset does not make them universally bad. It makes you small minded.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Digital audio then de-emphasized removable storage, re-introducing friction between exchanging music and listening to it on a portable player. And then, ubiquitous mobile internet (including to the most common portable music players) happened and re-removed that friction. DRM-free digital files are a lot simpler and lower friction to edit and share than audio-on-cassette ever was.

OrgNet 7y ago

how do you like rewind and seeking capabilities?

JulianMorrison 7y ago
Most other media has terrible UI for rewind, fast forward and seek compared to tape, whether audio or VHS. Digital video and audio in particular, nearly never have workable (live playback) rewind and fast forward.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  Use a real video player from anywhere in 2002 or so onward, e.g. mplayer, xine, vlc, Media Player Classic (mplayer is the fastest), with a real video file on your local disk. Fast forward and rewind are nearly instantaneous. For audio, look up a really old program called alsaplayer that could play forward, backward and at any speed. It's not "digital" that makes rewinding and fast forwarding crap on crap devices and services, it's the lack of care for user experience.
  - namibj 7y ago
    Or use mpv. It even works with URLs, supporting youtube-dl to handle many streaming sites.
    - sp332 7y ago
      VLC also supports this, if you Open Network Stream. It's funny they were included in this list, because they are strongly against including a good rewind feature. Modern video codecs refer back to previous frames a lot, so it has to be decoded forwards. It would take a ton of RAM to keep the decoded frame data for "previous" frames so you could play them in reverse. With some video files you won't notice a delay while skipping around, but some you will.
nosuchthing 7y ago
It's slower than random access mediums, but tapes have built in memory for track location which is nice when you're listening to something (in the car) and want to switch devices and carry on from your last listening point (books on tape).

scarface74 7y ago

If I recall correctly, I had a $400 HP Pavilion with a CD-RW around 2000 and used CoolEdit Pro ($20) to create fitness mixes. I used it to cross fade and beat match. CoolEdit was since bought by Adobe and is now Adobe Audition. But if all you wanted to do was create mix CDs. While not especially cheap, parallel port CD writers were available for PCs for less than $300 by 1999 and bundled with Eazy CD Creator. This was also around the time where ISPs were giving away PCs to sign up for dial up.

reaperducer 7y ago
Cheap, yes. But horribly unreliable. Underruns and other mysterious errors were so common that the failed burns gave us the notion of using compact discs as drink coasters. Even after the transition from parallel port to internal burners, disc burning was largely a crapshoot.
- scarface74 7y ago
  By 1998, I was using an HP parallel port CD writer with a Gateway Solo laptop. By then, they were decently reliable. I don’t remember getting any bad CDs.

Nition 7y ago

The easy recordability of cassette tapes had another bonus. Both tapes and records wear out a little each time you listen to them. But you could buy a record and dub it onto a tape, then listen to the tape. If you eventually wore out the tape, you still had the original record with only one playthough on it, so you could always dub it onto another tape. It's nice these days being able to listen to music and not simultaneously feel like you're treading a slow path to destroying the music you're hearing.

seandougall 7y ago
Agreed. I had a mixtape that my wife made for me back when we were dating in the late ‘90s, and it stayed on loop in my car tape player for years. To this day, my pitch memory of those songs is still about a half step flat.

Godel_unicode 7y ago

How many cassettes do you own? When was the last time you gave someone a cassette? I bet it's been over a decade, because cassettes suck. The backups are made in linear time, you can only share them with someone who is physically next to you, it's a giant pain to edit cassettes at a specific point in time, mashups are impossible because you have to have very expensive analog equipment to beat match, and pitch shift is then a problem. If you want to listen to a custom playlist you have to have thought of that well in advance, and you can only have as many as you have room for bulky cassettes. There's a reason nobody has a cassette deck anymore. It's not some conspiracy, and it's not because the kids don't understand. It's because they aren't very good.

reaperducer 7y ago
How many cassettes do you own? None. But my wife has over 200; many of them new releases in the last two years. When was the last time you gave someone a cassette? Last week when I recorded one of the albums my wife bought on iTunes onto a blank tape so she could listen to it on her tape player in the backyard. The backups are made in linear time So what? It's not like you have to sit there and turn the spindles. You push a button and walk away for an hour or a day or whatever and when you come back it's done. Also, many tape decks duplicate at double speed. you can only share them with someone who is physically next to you Again, so what? What's so horrible about sharing with actual friends instead of pretend internet friends? it's a giant pain to edit cassettes at a specific point in time, mashups are impossible because you have to have very expensive analog equipment to beat match, and pitch shift is then a problem Using the incorrect tool for a specific job doesn't mean the tool sucks. A cassette isn't a 24-track studio recorder. It's music for the masses. you can only have as many as you have room for bulky cassettes. Being able to touch something is a feature, not a bug. Nobody ever lost their entire cassette music collection because of a hard drive crash or a virus or a bad SSD chip or a power surge. There's a reason nobody has a cassette deck anymore. And by "nobody," you mean you. If nobody wants tape decks, then why are new ones still being manufactured? The director or IT for the multi-billion dollar company for which I work has a tape deck and a CD/MP3 player in her car. She uses tapes because they can take the abuse of an automotive environment better than digital media. And if the tape starts to wear, she just records a new copy. It's because they aren't very good. They are very good for the purpose for which they were created. Just because that purpose does not fit into your mindset does not make them universally bad. It makes you small minded.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Digital audio then de-emphasized removable storage, re-introducing friction between exchanging music and listening to it on a portable player. And then, ubiquitous mobile internet (including to the most common portable music players) happened and re-removed that friction. DRM-free digital files are a lot simpler and lower friction to edit and share than audio-on-cassette ever was.