Streaming Cassettes

Jason Koelber tells the story of how he moved from streaming music to buying cassettes for 404 Media.

When I came to Tokyo, a friend took me to a store that sold cheap portable cassette players, and I knew it wouldn’t be a huge leap to take my music listening fully offline. The walkman I bought is unbranded and has a transparent plastic shell, allowing you to watch all the little mechanical gears turning inside as the tape spools around the wheels and past the playheads. It was one of the easiest purchasing decisions I’ve made in recent memory: After years of psychic damage from social media and other phone-based distractions, I was ready to once again have a dedicated device that does nothing but play music.

Though Koebler really does make it sound like tapes helped him to get his groove back, I’m a little incredulous. I similarly bought a portable cassette player this year and a few tapes. I had read that new tapes were not even in quality to those made when the format was popular, and I found that to be true. I don’t remember pops being part of cassette listening, but they are now. The tapes and the hardware to play them on just isn’t what it used to be, and it honestly wasn’t that great back then. I sympathize with points in this piece, but I also think it’s hard with so much scarcity.

Pete Brown recently noted on Exploding Comma that he tried to buy CDs of the new music he discovered on Bandcamp.

While this is not exactly an excuse, I did actually hit Bandcamp earlier today to buy a few albums off my 2025 favorites list. Unfortunately, the CDs were sold out for all of them. I went with the downloadable files option, but now that leaves me with more stupid digital media I have to deal with.

When CDs were in fashion, you almost never had to deal with titles being out of print. CDs do not cost much to manufacture. Now, though, a small run is usually all an artist offers. I’ve run into the same thing that Brown has, almost every time I try to buy an artist’s CD on Bandcamp (if they even offer one), they are sold out because I didn’t get in on the ground floor.

It’s so strange to live in a time of so much musical abundance but with so few ideal, ethical options on how to take part in that abundance.