"Never put me in your box if your shit eats tapes" - Nas
It's about time.
Curry's, apparently the UK's biggest electronics retailer, announced that it will stop selling cassettes in their stores, and will be cutting of the sell of tape playing devices in the near future.
Having a lifespan that follows the rise of the personal computer pretty closely, I can understand technology nostalgia. I just can't understand the draw of the cassette though - one of my early traumatic experiences in life was my tape player eating my DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince tape (hey, "Charlie Mack 1st Out the Limo" was the jam).
Don't get me wrong, in terms of portability, and as a recorded medium, cassette was revolutionary. What would hip-hop be without mixtapes? I can remember dubbing off my dual tape deck, or engaging in a little early music piracy and taping songs off the radio. Still, I understand the love affair with the warmth of vinyl, or even the hypnotic motion of a reel-to-reel, more than cassettes. Their quality was mediocre at best (and got worse with repeated listenings), they were prone to getting snarled, and both vinyl and CD made it easier to navigate to specific tracks. Maybe I'm just a cassette hater though.
The death of the cassette tape (The Sun Online)