To those here who don't understand it... Why do we seek out retro gaming machines? Fire up a Commodore 64? Dig the Z80 unit out of the closet? Have massive projects attempting to bit emulate old TV gaming systems? Are these in some way better than our current hardware?<p>Retro has its own appeal... for a game, a vintage automobile, a manual transmission, a paper photograph, 35mm film, a watch without a microprocessor, a softer audio sound, or the scrape of a needle over vinyl. Someone will love it on nostalgia alone even if the world has "moved on".
I sort of get the appeal of the audio cassette.<p>You can throw it directly into your backpack or pocket, no delicate fiddliness like a CD.<p>It has enough physical substance to be meaningfully comparable to its contents, in contrast to a USB thumb drive, plus it has a finite amount of storage.<p>The limited storage is important in the context of mixtapes. That was a currency back in the 80's and 90's, a very meaningful and thoughtful gift to give or receive. Like a love letter.<p>You only got 20 or so songs, and that's it. Giving someone a subset of your torrent library is not the same.
Not sure I agree with the "warm analog sound of tape". I do agree vinyl has a nice sound. As someone who grew up with high end cassette decks (denon iirc and Ohm speakers) (with dolby which always muted the highs for me) there is really (in my opinion) nothing nice about the sound of a cassette to my ears.
I go to one or two shows a month with smaller touring bands, generally shows with less than 100 people. Almost all of them have at least one tape now, some are tape only. I think it's kind of silly, like no one remembers what a pain rewinding is. I even have a friend who runs an all tape label.<p>Edit: I bet that's what people older than me thought when I was buying vinyl in 1999.