I still have way more cassettes than I need; can't listen to them in the car anymore, so why do I keep them? Yeah, thought about replacing them with CDs, but...well, here's an example. My Bruce Cockburn tape would require buying 4 CDs to replicate the track list. So I spent $5.99 at Goodwill and bought a decent boom-box. The tape's still in good shape -- why replace it?
Here's the deal with cassettes: for most of us music enthusiasts, cassettes were all about control. For the first time, I could pick and choose the songs, the sequencing, and even the cover -- I was a producer! (Reel-to-reel tapes were a whole 'nother thing, and the only people I knew with reel-to-reel were in the Navy. I'd love to see a socio-economic profile of entertainment hardware users; who bought reel-to-reel, or Beta tapes, or laserdiscs?)
I'm proud to say that the mixtapes I made for friends (or girlfriends -- or potential girlfriends!) were always enthusiastically received. I really put some good collections together. But later...I don't know, maybe I was too budget conscious, but I'd do stuff like splice in new songs to replace the ones I got tired of -- and it was either too long (bad edit!) or muffled or just a mess. But even though many of these old tapes aren't sequenced very well, I still enjoy them because I can remember where I was (physically, emotionally) when I put them together.
I recently read an article on CollectorsWeekly.com about the whole burgeoning indie cassette label scene. (Urk, I just wrote 'scene'!) Cassettes are cheap compared to vinyl, and you can record yourself or your band for a lot less money than a studio session. They're easy to mail, and you can pass them around chain-letter style.
The major labels (what, are we down to 3 now, each one gobbling up as much musical real estate as they can) try to keep the lid on things pretty tight, so I find it amusing that an old discarded technology can still survive, like Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, to give The Man a little competition.
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