Some time ago I was doing a bit of mindless consumerism and was thinking about buying some Cassette Beasts merch, since I have quite liked the game and wanted to support the devs a little. And in-between all of the hoodies and t-shirts was the official soundtrack, unsurprisingly for the game, on a cassette tape.
This got me a bit curious. Cassettes aren't exactly unknown to me, but as someone born in 1996, the world had pretty much moved to CDs by the time I became aware of the concept of music media. My parents to this day occasionally talk about the time I referred to a vinyl record as a "really big CD". I did grow up with VHS cassettes though.
Anyway, I am definitely a bit of a hipster and also have at least a modest fascination with retro tech, so I felt like I would give it a shot and ordered the official Cassette Beasts compact cassette. But naturally if I wanted to do anything with that cassette I would also need a player. So, a quick search and a browse later I found a cheap new cassette player and waited for both of them to arrive.
Now, the first cassette player I got was not all that great. Like I said, it was a cheap thing from Ezcap, it was pretty noisy, seemingly picked up a fair bit of interference from cell towers and was a bit rickety in general. But it did play the tape successfully. Both sides of it even, since despite everything cheap about it, they did put auto-reverse on that player.
That rickety tape player also served as a nice learning tool, because it was not calibrated all that well. I had to figure out what an "azimuth" was because the reverse side play sounded frankly pretty horrendous. Tuning the azimuth of the play head got a slightly better sound out of it and all in all it was pretty passable.
Now, it should be obvious that this player was, objectively speaking, strictly worse than me just playing the same Cassette Beasts songs out of my phone even on extremely basic headphones. The sound had plenty of hiss both from the tape and the motor, the playback speed varied, there was a wow and flutter and all sorts of other fancy words for describing how a tape player sounds. Not to mention a tape doesn't allow you to easily replay a song or skip to the next one. And the concept of shuffling is not even anywhere close to the equation.
But despite all of that, there was a subjective element to the experience that made it feel really cool. Ordinarily my approach to listening to music has been as a background element: putting on a shuffled mix of music from some genre or artist while I do work or commute places. Maybe I would actively listen and watch to a music video of a new release every now and then and obviously when I played bass or guitar I would play along to a song, but it has been pretty rare that I turn on some music and just listen.
The cassette player made listening a more involved process and the inaccuracy and slowness of rewinding and fast-forwarding meant that I would put the tape on and then listen to everything on that tape in-order. So, for a first time in quite a while, I just laid back on my bed and just listened to some music and it was relaxing and fun.
I also picked up some other tapes which was a fun experience on its own. I could have gone looking for old second-hand tapes, but I was curious to see what stuff is published new on tape, so I went browsing Bandcamp and other record store cassette releases. Some artists I already knew had some stuff out, so I picked up a Rise Against cassette, but for the most part the releases were from artists I had not heard about whatsoever. And I had quite a bit of fun preview listening to albums that I otherwise probably would have never stumbled upon. One really cool find was a kiwi band called The Beths. I first ordered their latest album but quickly followed up with an order on the rest since I really liked their style and they have become one of my favorite bands since.
Since the tapes were coming kind of from all over, delivery took varying amounts of time. Annoyingly I had to declare some in customs but luckily Bandcamp allows me to pay the VAT up-front, so I just need to put their tax ID in and that sorts it out. But an incidentally cool thing about this is that on some days I would get back home and find a cassette had been delivered to my apartment while I was at work and then I would get to find out which one out of the ones I'd ordered it was and get to listening. If I didn't have to worry about storing stuff, I probably could be convinced that a service that delivers a random cassette tape to you via mail monthly would be worth a subscription fee.
Now, as with many things I get a minor obsession with, I felt like I could maybe upgrade my equipment a little bit and went looking for a replacement to my cheap player, since I was pretty sure I could get at least a bit better sound out of the tapes. Many of the online recommendations were to get a second-hand Walkman, but I was a bit hesitant still to get into second-hand stuff that would quite probably involve some disassembly and repairs. So, I went against the grain and shelled out for a We Are Rewind, plus an empty tape to go with it since the WAR can also record unlike the cheapo Ezcap.
And honestly, despite many people's grievances about it, the WAR has been quite nice. Now, it doesn't do all the tricks the premium stuff does and even things like auto-reverse are absent, but to me it plays stuff just fine. Tape hiss and such is still there but since it's just low white noise it blends into the background on most songs and is easily ignored. And even the recording was in my opinion fine. I'm sure it could be better and on my unit it seems like the audio is panned a slight bit to the left but not enough to be distracting. The process of organizing and recording my own mix tape was well worth the extra price of the additional empty cassette and I might honestly go back for more empties some point in the future.
So, summa summarum, I have gained some newfound appreciation for music through this fun little act of consumption. I have even more tapes on order waiting to be delivered and I could see myself picking up more in the future. The Bandcamp model is also nice in the sense that I get the cassettes plus the digital tracks, so I can also listen to them on my PC or phone when that's more convenient. But I have carried both the Ezcap and the WAR with me on commutes and such as well and had fun with it.
Audiophiles will obviously say that the quality is bad and I am fully aware. If I wanted the best audio quality, I would not touch analog media at all. Lossless FLACs with good hardware would let me listen to songs with essentially zero degradation for as long as I wanted. But I don't care about the audiophile stuff, most of my audio hardware is pretty basic and I have never bothered with FLACs - I just do lossy OGGs for the most part for my digital audio.
But in terms of physical audio media, tapes are kind of a convenient form factor. The players and tapes are smaller than vinyl equivalents and CDs just don't really have the same analog experience to them. It might not be convenient to have to pop a tape out, flip it and put it back into the player to listen to the second half of an album, but it's fun as an experience.
So, in my opinion it has been a worthwhile little side-adventure. I don't know if it would be like that for anyone else, since the objective convenience digital has over physical media is quite strong, but I sometimes do stuff not because it's convenient but because it's fun.
But if you'd like to simulate the experience with just digital stuff, here is something you could do: buy some digital album that you can genuinely own, plop the files onto your phone or PC, start the album without shuffle and just relax and listen. Experience the songs in their intended order and with your full attention. Maybe you'll also learn to appreciate music in a new way.
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