I used tapes and loved them, but they did break or like wear out. I naturally moved on to CDs and CD-R bridged the gap. But tapes were cool and almost magical i

I used tapes and loved them, but they did break or like wear out. I naturally moved on to CDs and CD-R bridged the gap. But tapes were cool and almost magical in that you could just record on to them, rewind, record over it. It was really cool to make instant recording with no computer or other conversion involved, just whatever was going on in the cassette recorder. Recordings, making mix tapes with your own voice, rapping over instrumentals was all really fun. CDs caught up with people making mix CDs too but they were never as cool. Mixtapes had background noises that added a touch of realism. It also took a while for cd-r drives to become common so there was a several year gap where everyone had CDs but no one could make mixes. Then again, for me personally, being the first person with a CD-R drives was basically a money printing machine.