I grew up with cassettes, and random access (lack thereof) was always the big drawback for me. Even vinyl, their predecessor, gave you that. With tapes you're s

I grew up with cassettes, and random access (lack thereof) was always the big drawback for me. Even vinyl, their predecessor, gave you that. With tapes you're shuttling the tape for a seeming eternity, then going forward & back by trial and error, to find the beginning of a specific song. The technology is better for listening in order. Hence mixtapes. Footnote: from hearing certain songs in the same order many times, like on my best & most-played tapes, I eventually grew to expect the next song upon hearing the previous one end. So even though I quickly and enthusiastically abandoned the technology of cassettes, I did recreate some of those mixes as digital playlists.