No one makes mix tapes anymore. MP3s and CD burners have taken a serious toll on the musical heritage of our generation, and it's time that we stopped ignoring it. Cassette tapes have gone from the accepted mixing format to the lowbrow, low-cost, low-class way to make custom collections. Children of the '80s, where is your outrage?
Yes, the music industry has switched recording formats before, but the move from vinyl to eight-tracks - or from eight-tracks to cassettes, or from cassettes to CDs - does not compare to the shift from mix tapes to mix CDs. Tapes were the first recordable form of consumer audio; before their introduction, no one could make mixes of any kind. So now, as blank CDs push tapes out of the spotlight, we witness the replacement of something original. This is not like one medieval king succeeding another; this is something unprecedented. The first and original king has been dethroned.
Of course, now there are other mixable formats around, such as MP3 players and the unfairly-overlooked Sony MiniDisc, but that only makes the change all the more dramatic. In the past ten years, we have moved from recording on tapes alone to recording on almost anything. I'm surprised that no one's tried to market a home vinyl-presser: "Mix a record! Impress your friends!"
The succession was so slow that no one's commented on it much. The MiniDisc appeared, and many hailed it as the format of the future; sure, it never caught on with enough people, but the market opened up a bit. People embraced burners and bargain-priced blank CDs cautiously, especially when burners came as standalone audio components instead of as computer peripherals. And tapes still endured - their sturdiness and ubiquity gave them enough of an edge to remain viable.
Now, however, MP3s have tipped the balance against cassettes, and making mixes will never be the same.
Tapes used to be the simplest and easiest way to compile music. Kids used to tape songs off the radio; now, they just download the MP3 and put it on this week's 50-cent CD. If your collection resides on your computer, it's far easier to make a mix CD (click "burn") than a mix tape (patch various audio cables together, stretch them across the room to your stereo, and stop using your computer for 45 minutes at a time).
Athletes helped cassettes survive for a while: no matter how good your skip protection, going running with a CD player is never convenient. MP3 players have defeated that advantage: they provide all the accessibility of CDs, play music skip-free, and allow you to make new mixes in minutes. And as the price of MP3 players has decreased, so have the advantages of a traditional Walkman.
Despite all these advantages, cassette tapes deserve a little respect and a little niche in our hearts. And all nostalgia aside, whether the world agrees or not, I'm not giving up my tapes yet.
Don't discount nostalgia, though. If you grew up with cassettes, you can't erase them from your life. I have too many memories associated with them - from the rock mix that my brother made for me before I even owned a CD player to my collection of concert bootlegs - to ignore their passing. Every tape brings me back to a certain era of my life, and I like my memories too much to give up on such a potent reminder of my past. Listening to a mix from two summers ago jolts me backwards in time much more than looking at photographs; if I want to preserve that experience, I damn well better hang on to my tapes.
And even if you love the advantages of modern technology, CDs have less personality than tapes. Everyone has a distinctive method for making mix tapes. Do you fade out at the end of each song? Leave pauses in between? Write out detailed liner notes? Burning a CD is sterile and clinical by comparison; it offers fewer opportunities for personal style.
Part of the charm of mix tapes comes from the high degree of control they give you over the listening experience. When you make a mix, you determine everything about each song, from its place on the tape to its volume; when you give such a tape to a friend, he must listen to everything the way that you dictated as you recorded it. CDs put that control in the hands of the listener, however. Don't like track two? Just skip it. It turns the mix from a personal experience to a more generic one. Rather than tailoring specialized mixes for people, you could just make one master mix and let your friends skip the tracks they didn't like. Where's the personal touch in that?
Another mixed blessing: making a mix tape takes a far more delicate hand than burning a CD. On tapes, you portion the 90 minutes of music into two balanced sides of 45 minutes apiece; on CDs, you just cram in 70 or 80 minutes of material and forget about it. Structure can be useful to an artist - why else would people write sonnets instead of free verse? The rhythm and duality of tapes has no equivalent in CDs.
So I won't give up on my tapes, and neither should you, dead though the format may be. I like my life, and I like remembering it through my music. And I'm not about to shell out $150 to go running while my $30 Walkman still works.
