The New York Times has a good article on current sales of cassettes and their not-so-bright future. It mentions one of the classic uses for cassettes - making a mix tape for your girlfriend (who hasn't done that! Though these days I guess it's an mp3 playlist). Apparently, CDs will be next down the tubes. A good friend of mine who's been a live audio trader for years laments the stampede to MP3s. He fears "lossless" formats - the uncompressed files on CDs or carefully compressed digital files that use algorithms that don't throw away part of the audio information - will become a thing of the past. I tend to doubt that, although "Digital Rights Management" is a concern on both sides of its debate.
Mix tapes will always have a place in my heart. They were the first way we could customize and listen to our music the way we wanted.... and contrary to the industry's cries, home taping never did kill the music business....
See also the mix tape that changed my life.
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