Casettes, Old, ineficcient, hard to spell, so why do I like them? Awnser: they're fun, and they're a novel way of storing music, allow me explain.

The main method of music consumption these days is streaming. If you buy your music online, on physical media, or download your music, then congratulations! Your method of enjoying music is superior in my opinion, but you're in the minority. Streaming music is convienient, sure, but in doing so, you loose control. If your internet goes down wave goodbye to the ability to listen to "your" music. If the website you use becomes defunct or is bought out by another company and liquidated for a tax break wave goodbye to all of your playlists and media. If an automated system on a certain website, decides that the remix you love is is in violation of copyright law, poof! That song is now gone forever unless someone else has done the thing you should have done and downladed the song for themselves. When you stream music, that music is at risk of all sorts of corprate BS, and can vanish from any website at the whim of any asshole who files a cease and desist. Not to mention how little the people who actually make the music get paid, and how all the major music streaming services operate at a loss. also spotify has some REALLY weird stuff going on.

Now I command you to think the following line.
"Ok POWERSTOMP you've expained why you dislike Music streaming, but why casettes? they're Inefficent, slow and BIG."
Well those points are correct, but you've neglected to mention the upsides!

Chapter 2: The Benifits Of Casette Tapes.

  1. Recording them is fun and unpreventable. Just hook up the computer output to the aux/mic in of any tape recorder, click record on your tape player, hit play on your playlist, and you're off! this is also impossible to detect.
  2. Operating them is tactile and feels amazing. The satisfying click of the buttons, the way the tape slides into the mechanism. All of these are sensory heaven on the level of floppy discs.
  3. Finding old tapes to record over is easy and cheap, and tape players are also cheap, at around 20$ for a mediocre one.
  4. Physical media is fun, and it feels nice to be able to hold your music in your hand.
  5. Encourages you to carefully curate playlists, and forces you to be more deliberate with your music choices.

If that doesn't sound fun to you, download your music instead and use an mp3 player or your phone. Of the 4 tape players I have 1 use bluetooth, one also has CDs, 2 accept SD cards with MP3s, and all of them also have radio, so even if you decide tapes aren't your thing, you'll likely still have other options.