Back in the middle 1980s, the LP was for home listening, and 8-tracks (the only portable recorded music format at the time) proved to be a failed experiment. The music industry answered with the cassette tape.




Quite an improvement in technology, a "giant leap" for musicians everywhere. By the end of the '80s, the CD format had been developed and the cassette began dying a slow death as a viable format. Many of us, however, still hang on to the piles of tapes we collected back in the day, do you have any old tapes you are proud of?

When was the last time you actually listened to one of them?

My dad still has his collection of cassette tapes, but I don't have any of mine. I haven't listened to a cassette in yeeeeeaaars. I don't even have most of my CD collection. I'm pretty much a product of the mp3 age now.

I still have most of my old tapes from when I was a kid packed up in boxes in my storage closet in the basement. The last album I bought in the form of a "tape" was the Boomerang sdtk., back in 1992. For the rest of the decade it was CDs for albums. I'd still buy cassette singles though and blank cassettes for dubbing the music from the CD for my walk mans. I did that all the way up until probably around 2000-2001. I think the last time I actually listened to a tape was about 3 or 4 years ago. I was cleaning up and found my old N.E. Heartbreak tape and popped it into my stereo. This was probably after 10+ years of not playing it...or even playing a tape on my stereo. The sound quality was muffled and I think it mechanically stopped before the side completed. lol

I don't really miss tapes, but I don't like CDs being replaced by mp3's. CD quality is about 5x better.

I still have a large collection of cassettes, a lot of them are music tapes that I made myself. I copied some of them to CD but the process was too long, I had to copy the tape to my mini disc recorder then transfer it to a CD, so it was double the work. I am in the process of getting rid of a lot of the old stuff so the cassettes will probably go as well

JM130ELM wrote:

I still have most of my old tapes from when I was a kid packed up in boxes in my storage closet in the basement. The last album I bought in the form of a "tape" was the Boomerang sdtk., back in 1992. For the rest of the decade it was CDs for albums. I'd still buy cassette singles though and blank cassettes for dubbing the music from the CD for my walk mans. I did that all the way up until probably around 2000-2001. I think the last time I actually listened to a tape was about 3 or 4 years ago. I was cleaning up and found my old N.E. Heartbreak tape and popped it into my stereo. This was probably after 10+ years of not playing it...or even playing a tape on my stereo. The sound quality was muffled and I think it mechanically stopped before the side completed. lol

I don't really miss tapes, but I don't like CDs being replaced by mp3's. CD quality is about 5x better.

Your definetly right, CD quality is better but it also depends on how the mp3 is made if its 320 bit rate it sounds pretty close to CD quality. WAV files are so large and you can't fit as much on a CD like Mp3's. Mp3's are nice, you can fit tons of them on one cd and literally have hours and hours of non stop music. I like playing them at party's so you don't have to bother changing the music.

I respect vinyls and CDs, but cassette tapes seem like cheap TV dinner. I never dealt with them but then I'm on 19. My parents had tape collections but don't have any of them left.

I still have just about all my childhood tapes. It's been over a decade since I played any of them last but they're around here somewhere.

I am the same as you, Atown. I have them ALL, just can't part with them! But it has been years since they have been dusted off and played!

I still have most of my old music cassettes tucked away in my TV/Stereo cabinet. As to when I last listened to one? Lawd...I can't recall. It's been probably a good ten years since I got the urge to seriously look them over, and by then it had already been years since I had pretty much abandoned them.

I remember making the transition to from tapes to CDs when I was in middle school. For a hot minute, I called myself "replacing" my tapes with the CD version, but quickly realized that I wasn't that interested in having most of them in CD format, so by and large my CD collection would be original.

Now I can barely recall the last time I bought a CD.

I'm a pack rat and tend to hang onto things, so I have a collection of about 300 audio cassettes from my adolescent, teens and early 20s stored in my attic. Many of them are beat up and with cracked cases, smudged ink, tattered, stained or worn inserts...but I never threw them away. Last time I listened to one of them was probably a year ago when I went up there to clean.

I started buying compact disks around approx. 1986 (remember those long CD boxes they used to come in? Ha.) For the rest of the 80s until around 1990-91, I'd interchangeably buy albums in both disk and cassette format. I think the last cassette I bought was Damn Yankees in 1991. From then on it was just CDs, of which I have a collection of over 800.

JM130ELM wrote:

I don't really miss tapes....but I don't like CDs being replaced by mp3's. CD quality is about 5x better.

Maybe it's just me but I don't like digital media. I like going to the record store and picking up the CD I want, bringing it home, popping it into the disc player and displaying it in my CD wall like a book. This iPod phase we're in is convenient as hell, but it's also boring.

I don't have all of them, but I still got some of them scattered in various parts of the house. Just like those old VHS tapes. I got next to 0 interest in any of them today, but I just don't wanna throw them anyway.

Dan wrote:

I'm a pack rat and tend to hang onto things, so I have a collection of about 300 audio cassettes from my adolescent, teens and early 20s stored in my attic. Many of them are beat up and with cracked cases, smudged ink, tattered, stained or worn inserts...but I never threw them away. Last time I listened to one of them was probably a year ago when I went up there to clean.

I started buying compact disks around approx. 1986 (remember those long CD boxes they used to come in? Ha.) For the rest of the 80s until around 1990-91, I'd interchangeably buy albums in both disk and cassette format. I think the last cassette I bought was Damn Yankees in 1991. From then on it was just CDs, of which I have a collection of over 800.

JM130ELM wrote:

I don't really miss tapes....but I don't like CDs being replaced by mp3's. CD quality is about 5x better.

Maybe it's just me but I don't like digital media. I like going to the record store and picking up the CD I want, bringing it home, popping it into the disc player and displaying it in my CD wall like a book. This iPod phase we're in is convenient as hell, but it's also boring.

Agreed. I think the convienance of downloading music today has inspired apathy - which plays into why music sales are so bad now. It was more fun to buy music at the record store in 1990 than it is to click to download it today.