Why Are Cassettes So Unpopular Among The General Public?

[Waninem]

The most no-nonsense option there is is an mp3 file. It's called an mp3 file, and it's free on YouTube. CDs are mp3 files you have to pay for. CDs are a scam. CDs belong in the landfill (or maybe they could be recycled into big earrings or something for a more eco-friendly option). CDs do not belong in a serious economy. CDs are like bottled water, mp3s are like tap water.

There is one niche thing that helps offset the disposability of CDs as a whole, at least for the home CD enjoyer: the humble CD-RW. From a cursory search, apparently all CD players that aren't ancient can read them, you can buy them cheaply, and just burn music onto them and re-use them as necessary. Obviously this is the more bootleg approach, and I'd only really recommend it if you have a CD player you want to use over a more modern MP3 player or phone, but if you have music already that you want to listen to but don't want to burn a regular CD-R or buy one, then it's somewhat comparable to how you can reuse a cassette. (Though your mileage may vary; apparently there's reports that some disc changers don't like certain ones, but if you find a CD player that's documented to take CD-RWs then you should be ok.)

But as for cassettes... as was said before in this thread getting the proper equipment to play them is a pain. I personally haven't ever really listened to them, but my dad had a whole stack of cassettes and a stereo to use them with at some point. I think it would be neat to listen to it in that format once just to experience the novelty of it. Surely one day, technology will advance again (or some patented stuff will become free) and a reasonably cheap, decent quality tape player will once again be availble to the home consumer. But as it is now, I'm currently priced out of the market, and if I gotta spend that much money on a tape deck or cassette player, then I might as well use that money on a halfway decent speaker/subwoofer setup or audiophile earphones and a DAC.

 

[RisingThumb]

Obviously this is the more bootleg approach, and I'd only really recommend it if you have a CD player you want to use over a more modern MP3 player or phone, but if you have music already that you want to listen to but don't want to burn a regular CD-R or buy one, then it's somewhat comparable to how you can reuse a cassette. (Though your mileage may vary; apparently there's reports that some disc changers don't like certain ones, but if you find a CD player that's documented to take CD-RWs then you should be ok.)

Quite a lot of secondhand cars have a CD reader on them for listening to music... though my family's car has Bluetooth too so it's not really needed anyway. idk, how many exist that take cassettes, or if that ever happened, but if it did... probably a narrow sliver of time where it was done, and a narrow amount of vintage cars that have cassette players.

 

[Ross_Я]

Quite a lot of secondhand cars have a CD reader on them for listening to music... though my family's car has Bluetooth too so it's not really needed anyway. idk, how many exist that take cassettes, or if that ever happened, but if it did... probably a narrow sliver of time where it was done, and a narrow amount of vintage cars that have cassette players.

Someone said "cars"?
Earl "Madman" Muntz started to promote and sell his Stereo-Pak back in 1962, which was probably the first commercial in-car audio system centered around magentic tapes. It was popular enough for Ford to jump into the scene and introduce their own system in 1965. Save to say, cassette players in cars were big, and they continued to be big throughout all the 70's. In the middle of the 80's CD players started to appear, and by the end of the 80's they all but defeated cassettes... albeit you still could find cassette players in some cars up to the early 2000's. In short: almost every american car from the 70's and first half of the 80's had a cassette player.
And yes, there were in-car vinyl players as well. As a matter of fact, there were three models: RCA, Panasonic and Chrysler. All three had different issues (and no, not the one you thought; the needle jumping was the least of those issues), and all three were priced rather highly despite those issues, and all of that contributed to low popularity of those things, which in turn forced two out of three models out of production even before the Stereo-Pak appeared on the scene. If I remember correctly, only Panasonic model made it to 1962.

 

[RisingThumb]

Cars

This is very interesting, I've never seen a cassette player or vinyl player in a car before. I've learnt something new today, thanks for sharing this tidbit about vintage cars

 

[punishedgnome]

In the middle of the 80's CD players started to appear, and by the end of the 80's they all but defeated cassettes... albeit you still could find cassette players in some cars up to the early 2000's. In short: almost every american car from the 70's and first half of the 80's had a cassette player.

CD players did not become common in cars until the late 90s. Like, if you had a CD player in your car in the late 80s, you were rich lol. Most people didn't even have a CD player at home until the early 90s. So realistically it's more like a 20-year span where damn near every car had a tape deck from the mid 70s to the mid 90s.

This is very interesting, I've never seen a cassette player or vinyl player in a car before. I've learnt something new today, thanks for sharing this tidbit about vintage cars

This post made me turn to dust lol

 

[Ross_Я]

CD players did not become common in cars until the late 90s. Like, if you had a CD player in your car in the late 80s, you were rich lol. Most people didn't even have a CD player at home until the early 90s. So realistically it's more like a 20-year span where damn near every car had a tape deck from the mid 70s to the mid 90s.

Knowledge updated.
I admit I am mostly in-tune with vinyl players and cassettes, since I mostly write about old cars. In particular, I did my research on in-car vinyl players when I spotted Chrysler Hi-Fi in one of Darryl Starbird's customs - Le Perle. But my knowledge about the advance of CDs in cars definitely can be a bit inaccurate.

 

[☉Kud]

. I think it would be neat to listen to it in that format once just to experience the novelty of it. Surely one day, technology will advance again (or some patented stuff will become free) and a reasonably cheap, decent quality tape player will once again be availble to the home consumer. But as it is now, I'm currently priced out of the market, and if I gotta spend that much money on a tape deck or cassette player, then I might as well use that money on a halfway decent

speaker/subwoofer setup or audiophile earphones and a DAC.

I agree that finding resources for cassettes can be very difficult. I luckily found me a used 90s Sony Walkman on EBay for $30. If you'd like yourself a portable cassette player, the 90s Walkmans are your best bet since not only are they much more cheaper than 80s ones, but the reason why thats the case was due to how overproduced they were during the era of the CD's peak.

 

[punishedgnome]

So how do you guys get the majority of your tapes? Do you buy blank ones and record from the radio? That was really common back in the day. You get two blank tapes and a boom box with two tape players, and you record a block of music from FM radio and then rerecord individual songs from that block onto another tape, cutting out the ads and DJs and stuff. As any radio from the 80s or early 90s will still work today, it seems like an economical way to get songs onto tape, depending on your taste in music. Still a lot of them on ebay for around $100 like this one:

Get one of those from eBay and a 10-pack of blank tapes from there for another $20, and you could start making your own mix tapes just like we did in the 80s and 90s. Only works if a local FM station plays music you like, though. Probably not going to be a lot of vaporwave on there, but a surprising number of radio stations in my area play less mainstream indy stuff during certain programming blocks. It'd be easy if you wanted a collection of popular oldies like Fleetwood Mac and the Doobie Brothers.

Around 20 years ago, I had a 2000 Chrysler Cirrus with a tape deck. I tried playing an MP3 on my computer, hooking a tape recorder up to the speaker jack on the computer, recording that to tape and listening to it in the car, but the results were very mixed. That was probably the last time I actually used tapes, as I got one of those adapters like this shortly after:



Then I could listen to my MP3 CD player in my car. If you are too young to remember MP3 CD players, they were portable CD players that could read MP3s off a CD, enabling you to fit a lot more songs on a CD. They were popular for a few years in the early 2000s before iPods really took off and were in many vehicles up until 2015 or so. My 2011 Ranger had one, for example. I had a portable one that looked like this, but I don't think it was this exact brand:

 

[Knows He Knows Not]

I mean the answer is self-evident, no? Cassettes, vinyls, and all physical media are utterly archaic and functionally inferior/useless compared to digital files. Vinyls in particular are usually filled with crackling, popping, and noise. It would be better to ask why physical media still exists at all besides as form of collecting; similar to funko pops, coins, rocks, or stamps.

Now the only reason vinyls are thought of to be a higher quality sound wise is because the physical limitations force producers to mix them with better DR ratings. So a lot of otherwise brickwalled production on CDs is "fixed" on vinyl. Technically it actually isn't the intended sound as you can have perfect DR ratings on CD, but these bands (or their producers) intentionally brickwall their music, and then it is then only changed because of the limitations of the vinyl itself forcing them to unbrickwall. Strictly speaking CD is a far superior sound quality to vinyl or cassette, assuming it is used properly by the producer.

 

[punishedgnome]

It would be better to ask why physical media still exists at all besides as form of collecting; similar to funko pops, coins, rocks, or stamps.

To be fair, I think it does only exist as a form of collecting.

 

[Knows He Knows Not]

To be fair, I think it does only exist as a form of collecting.

I think many people believe physical media to actually be of a higher quality, some of them even in this thread have stated as much. Part of that I addressed about specifically vinyl mastering, but the other part is the entire delusion of analog worship in general. Maybe even more accurately it is the nostalgia and misguided visions of the past that lead to this sort of thing. Most stored information is better now, the main issue is the not the modern forms, but rather how the forms are being used by the modern people. Just like the fact we have access to the world's libraries and endless information, except most the internet is used for nonsense like top ten daily tiktok videos. Digital audio formats are superior to the physical counterpart, but the mastering and production by the producers themselves is less and less dynamic to suit the lower quality audience consuming them.

 

[punishedgnome]

I think many people believe physical media to actually be of a higher quality, some of them even in this thread have stated as much.

While I don't disagree that some fans of particular forms of physical media often make the argument that their form is superior, I think realistically the majority of people who collect physical media today do so due to concerns surrounding ownership and corporate surveillance. A copy of a movie I have purchased from a digital storefront can be revoked and I no longer have access to the movie. Likewise, the app connected to that digital storefront often tracks information like what movies you own and how many times you have watched each of them. This is not possible with a physical copy such as a DVD.

I think the narrative that physical media such as tapes and DVDs commonly degrade to the point where they are unplayable is a psyop being pushed on consumers by media rights holders. I have a vast physical media collection and have yet to run into a DVD or VHS tape that will not play. It's part of the clear push toward paying a monthly fee for the right to access things you used to be able to own.

 

[RisingThumb]

I mean the answer is self-evident, no? Cassettes, vinyls, and all physical media are utterly archaic and functionally inferior/useless compared to digital files. Vinyls in particular are usually filled with crackling, popping, and noise. It would be better to ask why physical media still exists at all besides as form of collecting; similar to funko pops, coins, rocks, or stamps.

Ok, I'll bite. Plenty of things written on paper do not translate at all into digital files. Pop-out books do not translate. Any physical media dependent on shadows, reflections etc, doesn't translate. Scrolls do not translate to digital files. Plus plenty of digital files are absolute garbage. Look at plenty of Internet Archive digital scans of books. Those are digital files, not PDFs of course, but digital files, yet the experience of reading them is often garbage. Archaic and functionally inferior? Perhaps... though I struggle with reading books in only PDF form, and vastly prefer physical books. To say they're all useless is too reductionist. If you still use a pen and paper... you've already proven a use. Also magnetic tape in general as @Ross_Я mentioned before, is still used in many backups and archival systems too.

Also about coins and stamps, these are so you can participate in society without having to spend money on a printer to print a shipping label, or without a contactless card or without a phone. It's very difficult to get a bank account without an address, and it's a big expense to get a phone, if you can't even buy basic commodities. It's too reductionist to say these are useless. In Britain, you see the homeless struggling more and more because of how we have for the most part moved to a cashless society, so nobody keeps small notes or loose change on them to give to the homeless. As a result, getting basic commodities gets harder for them. Probably also felt by buskers as well- though this is besides the point. I would also add, it's not just collecting but also sentiment- people often hang onto items that mean something to them.

Anyway both of these are minor sidepoints to show you why it's not entirely useless. I agree with your general point.

 

[Knows He Knows Not]

Ok, I'll bite. Plenty of things written on paper do not translate at all into digital files. Pop-out books do not translate. Any physical media dependent on shadows, reflections etc, doesn't translate. Scrolls do not translate to digital files. Plus plenty of digital files are absolute garbage. Look at plenty of Internet Archive digital scans of books. Those are digital files, not PDFs of course, but digital files, yet the experience of reading them is often garbage. Archaic and functionally inferior? Perhaps... though I struggle with reading books in only PDF form, and vastly prefer physical books. To say they're all useless is too reductionist. If you still use a pen and paper... you've already proven a use. Also magnetic tape in general as @Ross_Я mentioned before, is still used in many backups and archival systems too.

Also about coins and stamps, these are so you can participate in society without having to spend money on a printer to print a shipping label, or without a contactless card or without a phone. It's very difficult to get a bank account without an address, and it's a big expense to get a phone, if you can't even buy basic commodities. It's too reductionist to say these are useless. In Britain, you see the homeless struggling more and more because of how we have for the most part moved to a cashless society, so nobody keeps small notes or loose change on them to give to the homeless. As a result, getting basic commodities gets harder for them. Probably also felt by buskers as well- though this is besides the point. I would also add, it's not just collecting but also sentiment- people often hang onto items that mean something to them.

Anyway both of these are minor sidepoints to show you why it's not entirely useless. I agree with your general point.

Pop out books exist in 3d animations, same with shadows, etc; these also don't break by opening it too quickly or being rough with them.
Shipping labels can be printed at the local library or shopping center for cents.
If people in war-torn third world hellholes have cellphones, then our welfare homeless can afford one (and they usually have them, in fact I often see them with full laptops). I suggest offering to buy them a burger instead of giving them cash, they turn it down every time, because the money you give them is going for drugs, not their well being, belongings, or phones. I no longer bother interacting with them anymore because of this, they are in the situation that they deserve and wish for.

Reading books is a better experience on digital, citations often have direct links you can click on that take you to the direct source and they can even include videos in the book for demonstrations. Beyond that you also have no need to have a label to publish your book, nor any cost to pass onto the consumer. Less censorship, more democratization, better experience, an infinite shelf life. Physical media is a waste of resources and time.

 

[HammerKoopa]

I think books are a different can of worms compared to audiovisual media, written words have been showed to be able to survive millenia in the best case scenarios and now we are learning that the phrase "if its on the internet, its there forever" is not 100% true due to link rot. On that subject realistically how long does your consumer SSD or old hard drive can last? I keep reading accounts on this thread of CDs, VHS and Casettes Tapes withstanding for decades which is a big attractive for physical media/analog media preservation without having to do backups or migrate data every few years.

A copy of a movie I have purchased from a digital storefront can be revoked and I no longer have access to the movie. Likewise, the app connected to that digital storefront often tracks information like what movies you own and how many times you have watched each of them. This is not possible with a physical copy such as a DVD.

This is the same scenario with downloaded or pirated media, it just becomes a matter of how you archive it.

 

[punishedgnome]

Reading books is a better experience on digital, citations often have direct links you can click on that take you to the direct source and they can even include videos in the book for demonstrations. Beyond that you also have no need to have a label to publish your book, nor any cost to pass onto the consumer. Less censorship, more democratization, better experience, an infinite shelf life. Physical media is a waste of resources and time.

Ok, Ok, I get it, you've got a great gig at the CIA. You don't need to rub our faces in it.

This is the same scenario with downloaded or pirated media, it just becomes a matter of how you archive it.

I actually do pirate most of my stuff, but I think a big crackdown on piracy is just around the corner. The noose has been tightening on sites that have been safe havens like archive.org. They're going after the distributors themselves, though, as opposed to the downloaders. I use Usenet, and I'm hoping it's obscure and hard enough for the common man to figure out to keep flying under the radar.

 

[Digital Cheese]

I actually do pirate most of my stuff, but I think a big crackdown on piracy is just around the corner. The noose has been tightening on sites that have been safe havens like archive.org. They're going after the distributors themselves, though, as opposed to the downloaders. I use Usenet, and I'm hoping it's obscure enough to keep flying under the radar.

I actually wonder how it would play out if archive.org were forced to remove a lot of material for copyright. Presuming such prevailed, we could have the largest informational loss probably in human history, mostly in extremely obscure things. The internet is not as permanent as people think it is, all you have to do is destroy enough hard-drives which is easier than one would think, albeit not if there are more than around 5. This is presuming no data was harmed during the Internet Archive hack, because if it were messed with, then this is already mostly irrelevant.

 

[Knows He Knows Not]

I think books are a different can of worms compared to audiovisual media, written words have been showed to be able to survive millenia in the best case scenarios and now we are learning that the phrase "if its on the internet, its there forever" is not 100% true due to link rot. On that subject realistically how long does your consumer SSD or old hard drive can last? I keep reading accounts on this thread of CDs, VHS and Casettes Tapes withstanding for decades which is a big attractive for physical media/analog media preservation without having to do backups or migrate data every few years.


This is the same scenario with downloaded or pirated media, it just becomes a matter of how you archive it.

Most of ancient Greek writing is lost to time and it is probably the single most studied culture in the world, even Roman philosophical writings are mostly lost. The internet is not forever, however given that proper interest in the subject is maintained, it is surely more hardy than deteriorating papers; those papers that also cost real world resources to preserve and maintain. Migrating or cloning data digitally is nothing more than a few clicks, compared to rewriting the entire complete works of Aristotle with no errors on your end using the highest quality materials and providing a space free of mold, fire, and all else.

As for your random neocities being lost to time if you don't remember to preserve them, that's on you.

 

[RisingThumb]

Pop out books exist in 3d animations, same with shadows, etc; these also don't break by opening it too quickly or being rough with them.

True, but not as impressive or fun. It's like you can view a 3D model of it, or you can 3D print it and interact with it in real life. Plus these pop out books often are for children or for the awe of it. This sort of thing is like saying you can experience a holiday by looking at some photos on google images. If you have a kid, would you rather show them it in a book or in a 3D model on a website?

If people in war-torn third world hellholes have cellphones, then our welfare homeless can afford one (and they usually have them, in fact I often see them with full laptops). I suggest offering to buy them a burger instead of giving them cash, they turn it down every time, because the money you give them is going for drugs, not their well being, belongings, or phones. I no longer bother interacting with them anymore because of this, they are in the situation that they deserve and wish for.

True enough, but it is a price of admission for society. Did you know that the London Tube is an absolute nightmare to use with physical cash, but cashless via card is smooth and easy to use? The drugs point I agree, many are at rock bottom of their own choice and they still have plenty compared to other nations. Also for cashless, this means tips are often done cashless too, which means they get eaten by the megarich, and not shared as much to the employee. Terrible compared to with cash where they keep the full tip(though the UK isn't a tipping culture unlike the states).

Reading books is a better experience on digital, citations often have direct links you can click on that take you to the direct source and they can even include videos in the book for demonstrations.

Can you show me examples? Often citations in papers, pdfs etc, don't have links attached so don't give you that better experience. I'd bloody well love it if they did more of this though. The video part is true... but very few ebooks do this from my experience, and when they do, it's usually stuff like technical manuals.

Beyond that you also have no need to have a label to publish your book, nor any cost to pass onto the consumer.

You don't need a label anyway to publish your book. ISBNs are not needed for publishing books. They're needed if you want them to be easy to categorise and for sales, shops, libraries etc, but many ISBN offices act as a rubbish tax on making books. Just reject it and do print on demand books or bind your own books. As for the cost point, yeah, but that's because digital files are just digital files. I know this because I have experience doing it for blackwindbooks.

Less censorship, more democratization, better experience, an infinite shelf life. Physical media is a waste of resources and time.

I disagree. Banning physical books is extremely hard when anyone can reprint books, or do the transcribing work themselves if they want. In fact... this is part of how the books of the Bible have survived many attempts by others to persecute Christians. If it's digital it's much easier to censor, as specific hashes of files can be blacklisted off sites, AI tools can be used to read files and prevent their upload etc. They're even integrating this stuff on the OS-level with Windows, and Apple did it ages ago scanning Iphones for CSAM. Does that sound democratised... resistant to censorship? Also if you're gonna make the claim they have an infinite shelf life... we can play dirty here and say ancient cuneiform clay tablets BTFO digital files because they have survived multiple millennia... such as this one from 4000 years ago:

Do you believe your digital files will survive 4000 years? Though clay tablets are unwieldy as fuck. Books though, last as long as paper which can last a good 500+ years if taken care of right, and you can even get multiple millennia in the right conditions, like with the codices of the Nag Hammadi Library. I do not believe digital files have this shelf life, because major Geomagnetic storms that cause this sorta damage, happens often enough. See the Carrington event as an example(1859). As for it being a waste of resources and time- it's only a waste to you. Books, Cassettes, Vinyl, Coin collections, Stamps etc give joy to some people. Let them enjoy it, the world is filled with enough misery. Are you a Buddhist by chance?

You don't have to be extreme about it. You can prefer digital media for the better experience, and this already is what a lot of people are like, see Spotify, Audiobooks etc. There's nothing wrong with that, just as there's nothing wrong with enjoying physical media.

 

[knowyouareloved]

Get one of those from eBay and a 10-pack of blank tapes from there for another $20, and you could start making your own mix tapes just like we did in the 80s and 90s.

You can buy audiobook copies of the bible on tape at a lower cost per tape than blanks. I am not sure to what extent overwriting existing audio hurts the sound quality though.