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The number of people who enjoy music is and always has been lower than the number of people who find it useful to use music as a pretext for socializing. Tape i
by Atheros 3y ago
The number of people who enjoy music is and always has been lower than the number of people who find it useful to use music as a pretext for socializing. Tape is easier to carry and lend to friends than vinyl. Tape can be recorded by home users and vinyl cannot which means that making a mix tape and sharing it with people is possible with tape but not vinyl.
The physical properties of tape make it much better for socializing than digital files or streaming services because it forces in-person interaction. That's what people were actually enjoying throughout the 20th century, we all just lived in a collective fantasy that it was music that people were after when it wasn't quite that after all.
- andyferris 3y agoI feel culture is meant to be shared. I remember watching TV shows in the 90s and discussing each episode with friends. It was great. Or you could rent a video movie and watch it with friends (amortising the cost). Mix tapes were also great gifts. I dunno, the tech was technically inferior but it just worked out nice somehow.
- stevezsa8 3y agoI know what you mean about discussing TV shows or music with friends. At school, me and my bestie at the time would quiz each other on the previous night's episode of Star Trek. How lame we were :]
- JohnFen 3y ago> Mix tapes were also great gifts. I recognize, in hindsight only, that every woman I'd dated seriously has received a mix tape from me. Well, in the old days it was a mix tape. These days it's more likely to be a CD or a thumb drive. But it's the same thing in the end. I think it's a way of revealing a more intimate part of myself. Kind of "you should know who I am, and here is an important part of that" kind of thing.