CD vs. Cassette: Labels Edition (Cassette Store Day is Oct 13th)

Nothing solidifies a new friendship like a thoughtfully assembled playlist, loaded for posterity to a physical object, retrievable from a keepsake box. No internetting required.

Paper surface area displays an item's passive advertisement.

Insert J-cards for cassette tapes and CDs can be customized with pens stickers, imagination and inspiration. Spotting a cassette or CD or vinyl case from across the room sparks a mood to play its content.

But the case-free cassette far surpasses the naked CD in terms of customization possibility.

And without a popular media form so easily altered *and finalized* at the lay level as the cassette, how is today's music culture nurturing and nudging budding sound artists?


Is it our imagination - or was the cassette age more conducive to homemade experimentation than peak CD?







This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.