Ah, the cassette tape. Nothing quite says 1980s like cassette tapes, although to be fair I think this format was commercially available since the 70s and was used well into the late 90s.
Sure, CDs was around and had been since ’82, but for most folks growing up in the 80s and much of the 90s, either the CD was too expensive compared to cassette tapes or the device to play CD (the CD player) was still too expensive. So, for quite a number of years, cassettes was the most popular format for music.
Growing up in the 90s, for what I can remember, most people that I knew who owned a portable music player, if they can even afford to get one at all, was in the form of a cassette-radio combo running on two AA batteries. Owning a CD player was a next level kind of thing. So, of course, with many young people still only having access to a cassette player, there was a demand for this format.
And forget about streaming or downloading music; this was a time where the internet was still very new and not common in most household. The only way to hear new music was either on the radio or if you went to the nearby music record store and hope they have a copy of your new favorite single, artist, or band on cassette. If you were really broke and have nothing else better to do on a Saturday afternoon, you get a blank cassette tape and get ready to press “Record” when that song you really like come on the radio (if they even play it at all while you’re sitting by that boombox of yours).
By around the 2000, CD format was finally gaining more of the market as the go-to format for music album. And CD Players were now more affordable to a wider audience. With Personal Computers being more obtainable to most people too, the new cool thing was also having a CD Burner. So now, instead of making a mix tape your crush, you can now make a CD mix; I can’t speak from experience…mostly because I didn’t have a personal computer until I was near graduating from high school.
I remember when I got my first car back in 2003, it had a cassette player deck and I was looking forward to replacing it with a more contemporary CD deck. If it played MP3 format on a CD, even better. I don’t remember which one I got, I just remember it was a Sony Xploid deck of some sort. I was finally current with the times, with a new CD player deck in my car.
Now, looking back many years later, I kind of miss that cassette deck and I am grateful that what I have in the car I have now is a factory deck with both CD and cassette. I actually use my cassette deck quite often nowadays since I play music off my phone utilizing a 3.5mm headphone jack to cassette adapter. That’s the only way to do it if you don’t have bluetooth in your car. These cassette adapter things had been around since the portable CD Player days; I’ve never thought that I would use these cassette adapters again, but am glad it’s around.
Is cassettes making a comeback, like the way vinyl record has in recent years? Depending on who you ask or talk to, some may say it already has. It was popularized in a popular comic-based movie a few years back and there is a company that still manufactures cassette tapes. For some, just like vinyl, cassette provides an aesthetic tone or sound that just can’t be replicated in digital format. The physical design of what makes it a cassette tape is quite retro-cool in itself.