The New York Times has written an unofficial obituary for the cassette tape. The imperfect format, prone to hissing, stretching, and breakage, also offered music users an unheard of customizability that changed the way music fans performed courtship rituals. Though tapes remain in use mainly for recording conversations, their use for prerecorded media is all but over. None of the current Billboard Top 10 albums were released on cassette, though half were released on vinyl. Only four hundred thousand music cassettes were sold in total last year, down from 173 million ten years ago, which counts as one tenth of one percent of total music sales. In addition, only 480,000 portable players were sold last year, compared with a peak of 18 million in 1994. Shawn Dubravac, an economist with the Consumer Electronics Association, says that he expects the cassette to go the way of the eight-track tape, as the format has little “sex appeal” compared with vinyl. He probably can’t remember getting a collection of twenty carefully arranged songs with hand-drawn album art. While no one is going to miss their copy of Bob Seger’s Greatest Hits or Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual, there will always be a small place for that type of cassette tape. [New York Times]