I started getting cassette players working again when I had kids - I had lots of old cassettes with stories still, and after looking into a lot of stuff determined that it is one of the best physical storage formats for that kind of content for kids we currently have. Its major advantage is that it automatically saves state, and the state saving is player-independent. Add to that that players typically have large clunky buttons ideal for kids hands, and you have something even all the dedicated digital kids media players can't compete with.

It's been thirty years since I last used a cassette tape (the adaptor things you'd stick in the car radio don't count) and I've never once missed them.

I lived through vinyl, 8-track, cassettes, and CDs. I digitized all of my music over 20 years ago and no longer even own a physical media playback device. I can't fathom going back. Digital or bust.

Pretty clear-cut example of the Submarine[0] genre.

[0] https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html For those who aren't up-to-date with their HackerNews lore.

Of course cassettes were all around me when I was younger; even my first car had a cassette deck. They seemed like an old relic in that time already - with the drawbacks mentioned in the article, so it was easy to put them away seemingly forever.

However, I got "back" into cassettes recently with some new releases. Grabbed a FiiO CP-13, and while the quality still isn't great, with low wow and flutter it's perfectly serviceable. There's one thing that made it stand out and felt like we missed something that's now become a lost art - absolutely no delay between pressing play and music playing. No buffering from a streaming service, no megabytes pushed into RAM, no decoding, no FIFOs being filled before the signal exiting through a DAC.

Did a remix awhile back and printed to a cassette using a Tascam 414 Portastudio. Brought it back into the computer at about three quarters of normal speed twisting the dial occasionally. The other side of tape was Fleetwood Mac “The Dance” my dad dubbed for me in the 90s. The imperfections of that old hissy tape with backwards Stevie Nicks bleeding through collapsed the stereo field in a nice way. I welcome this trend!

I might use audio cassettes if I want to record my own audio temporarily (and later copy it to a CD if I decide to keep it; I have done this before), especially if the higher quality of CDs is not needed. For most uses I would probably not use audio cassette tapes; I prefer to use CDs.

(One feature of audio cassettes is that it will stay where it was left off (even if it is removed and used in a different player), although this can be both an advantage and a disadvantage (for one thing, each cassette has only one position). At least, you can easily rewind it back to the beginning. There are other advantages and disadvantages as well)

Cassettes lack the one thing LP records do better than digital formats: a large surface to display album art and roll a doobie.

I remember being SO HAPPY when I got rid of all my cassette tapes and vinyl discs for CDs. I was an early adopter of digital and, to this day I don't regret it. There's no way I'm going back.

What's next? VHS?

Vinyl resurging, I can understand. But cassette tapes were always so fragile. I can't count how many got twisted up in the player and lost forever.

Their only redeeming quality was the mix tape.

If you were free to invent a completely new form of physical media for music roughly in the same space as casettes/vinyls/cds, what would you invent?

Casettes save state but you to rewind. Vinyl have a great album art, but are fragile. CDs and Casettes are small and allow saving and making mix tapes at home. Can we mix and match? How?

Taylor Swift (and Ed Sheeran) releasing her albums on vinyl is what caused vinyl prices to sky rocket, so not happy to hear she's moving onto cassettes too. I moved to collecting tapes due to vinyls being too expensive to get for anything but my most loved albums.

Some genres just feel better to listen to on tape too: lofi black metal, dungeon synth, hardcore, anything that likes to play with lo-fi sounds for aesthetic sounds nice on tapes and it really adds to the experience.

Well-timed article. Today I discovered the FM-84 Atlas album.

Been following people who have been making electronic music mixes between two cassette decks and a mixer which are worth a listen. The thing that's interesting is that you can pitch up and down in ways that sound nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzsa1M7s1sk

Anyways, here's the mixes:

Trippy Ambient Cassette-Only Mix by Bop | Rewind Ritual 01

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feHvyc69xe4

Cassette-Only Drum & Bass Set by BOP | Live at SK1 Records

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmBcBPV-3U

DnB mix with cassette tapes (DJ Ponkachonka)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8jp5TcherI

Cassette mix drum & bass (2005 - 2010) (DJ Ponkachonka)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpqui0lo-v4

What's crazy is that at least the portable cassette decks aren't cheap anymore. Look on eBay at prices and be amazed

So are 80s phones! Lol (I hated both)

https://tincan.kids/?srsltid=AfmBOopPdHpavGKB5WUVhZZDk34dKul...

Even when I was a kid an cassettes were the height of tech I hated them. They sound like crap and you can't even try to skip meaningfully and rewind is a nightmare.

Did people just forget the era of CD burning? Cassettes sucked.

Normal non-tech people were ripping CDs with iTunes. "Rip. Mix. Burn." was a nationwide if not worldwide advertisement.

All of this still works, if you have a CD drive.

If you're going to bother buying a cassette player... what's the allure for that over a CD-R and a basic CD player. CD players in cars are going away, but they're still around in houses and inexpensive small boomboxes.

But then... what's the allure of that over say any old audio player that takes SD cards or just a USB stick. A lot of modern cars and also stereo receivers and TVs will take a USB stick and play files from it. These players are incredibly prevalent and very easy to use. And loading the music from a computer or even a tablet is easy.

Of these three, cassette is the absolute least likely to be available anywhere.

You can still have the experience of making a playlist and even putting the files on a USB stick for someone. Importantly, they can actually play it on their own listening device.

I find it depressing that there seem to be only two ways to distribute media and manage one's audio collection: Either ultra-convenient but fully locked down streaming services - or analog "vintage" media like vinyl or cassettes, which do give you a physical medium under your full control, but also require you to forego all the progress we made with digital media.

The one thing that's absent: Plain old audio files that you can store on your hard drive and copy to your phone or other devices.

Edit: Ok, there are still more options left than I thought. I take that back then :)

Wish i had kept my old Sony walkman! Quite a sturdy guy as i recall ..

Quick! Fins a Nakamichi 550 Portable. Amazing sonic and build quality.

Never really understood buying pre-recorded cassettes. It was better to buy the vinyl and make your own tapes.

Personally, I’m holding out for the CD comeback.

Anyone have recommendations for a cassette player?

"In many ways, Bob's Big Boy never left, sir. He's always offered the same high-quality meals at competitive prices..."

whatever is old is new again. it's a story as old as time.

Ah yes, the record player of the 80s. Hipsters gonna hipster...