Cassette tapes & Mixtapes

‘Compact, convenient, and easy to operate, the audio cassette became the most widely used format for magnetic tape and dominated the field for prerecorded and home-recorded music during the 1970s and 1980s. Although superseded by digital players and recorders in the 1990s, the cassette tape remains the dominant form of sound recording worldwide.’

ST JAMES ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE (2006) Cassette tape. Bookrags. Weblog. [Online]. Available from: http://www.bookrags.com/history/cassette-tape-sjpc-01/. [Accessed 8/10/09].

This is in every way true, however I dare say now that there is not a need to record our own music onto cassettes anymore, in our new digital age and with Web 2.0 we can now save playlists online and go back to them when we feel like, unlike with cassettes where they had to be done at one time, if they were left they had to be left on pause because it would be impossible to go back to the correct spot where the user left the tape recording. This is only one of the major advantages of how new media has evolved and leaned towards a more digital way of operating technology 

Another advantage would be the fact that a playlist (mixtape) can be created in as little as 2 minutes rather than back in the day when mixtapes would take hours to create and it would be more of a chore than a hobby or something somebody did for fun; sitting down and fast forwarding or rewinding a cassette tape doesn’t sound like much fun to me … ?

I have created a video on Mix tapes and Audiocassettes which I have uploaded to YouTube. This video was created to show the progression of mixtapes over time. It focuses on the way mix tapes were originally createdon audio cassettes and then over time became less dependent on audio cassettes as a medium and during the surge of Web 2.0. an increasingly popular concept was shared; creating playlists on a computer and then uploading said playlist to a site where it can be shared by many other users. I have just started using Spotify and this is a perfect example of sharing playlists online. Sharemyplaylists.com partners with Spotify to enable users to share their playlists online; maybe this is a mixtape created online rather than on an audio cassette?

However you’d describe it, it’s definitely popular and is definitely a form of new media, and, most importantly participatory media.

I made my YouTube short documentary by looking at various bits of research online, collecting various images that were relevant to the subject matter and by merging both my research and my images together I created a documentary which explained to people what mixtapes are and how in recent years they are thought of as a new form of media with the introduction of Web 2.0 and participatory media tools.

Source list for YouTube video:

Images used:

80s mixtape. (2009) [Online image]. Available from: http://www.kaboodle.com/reviews/80s-m… [Accessed 10/10/09].

Mixtapes. [Online image]. Available from: http://homepage.mac.com/alqahtani/mix… [Accessed 10/10/09].

Audio cassettes. (2004). [Online image]. Available from: http://www.tape.com/pg_blank_media_ne… [Accessed 10/10/09].

Stack of cassettes. (2009). [Online image]. Available from: http://www.dealsofamerica.com/archive… [Accessed 10/10/09].

Magnetic tape. (2009). [Online image]. Available from: http://www.oursbiz.com/Company/202127… [Accessed 10/10/09].

David Gray greatest hits. (2009). [Online image]. Available from: http://live.hofma.net/?p=179. [Accessed 10/10/09].

Information used:

DESIGNBOOM. (2009). Cassette tape culture. [WWW]. Available from: http://www.designboom.com/contemporar… [Accessed 8/10/09].

ST JAMES ENCYCLOPEDIA OF POPULAR CULTURE (2006) Cassette tape. Bookrags. Weblog. [Online]. Available from: http://www.bookrags.com/history/casse… [Accessed 8/10/09].

WIKIPEDIA. (2009). Mixtape. [WWW]. Wikipedia. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtape. [Accessed 8/10/09].