It’s the summer of 1984. Prince’s “When Doves Cry” is #1 on the Billboard chart for the third week in a row and Sony’s Walkman turned five years old. Since its release, the cassette has been the catalyst to a monsoon of change within the music industry, affecting music listeners all around the globe.
There isn’t much to do in Friendswood, a suburb of Houston, Texas, meaning 15-year-old Caren Helten and her friends spent a lot of their time on the muddy-watered beaches of The Gulf of Mexico. One thing they do a lot of? Pass around Budweiser, concealed in a brown paper sack, and listen to music.
“We were all really into making tapes,” she tells me. “But if I’m being honest, I received a lot more tapes than I gave out.”
Of course, she is referring to the unofficial sixth love language: receiving a mixtape. The power of the cassette is that it does all of the talking for you. Things impossible to say? Put it in a song. Wanting to do something but don’t have the balls? Consider it said with the 90 minute mix.
“Receiving a mixtape was a signal that someone is thinking about you, and based on the kinds of songs on the tape, you knew exactly what kind of feelings they had for you,” she said. “You could be friendzoned or hit on by the types of songs.”
Poet Lavinia Greenlaw said it best. “Perhaps because in a world of musical ease and choice, there’s pleasure in having someone else choose for you, in not being able to decide on the next track, in being made to listen. More importantly, there is the pleasure of knowing that this arrangement has been made just for you. The mixtape is a unique meeting point between two people - like a letter or a dance. It remains the best way to let music have your feelings for you.”
Between the social aspect and emotional connection, the complicated nature of creating the mixtape has left the cassette embedded in the hearts and minds of music enthusiasts forever.
Robert Sawyer has over 30 years working within the music industry; he started out at EMI Records managing producers, songwriters and remixers and now co-owns his own business supplying music for DJs. Throughout his career, he’s played witness to the negative effects of cassette culture; rampant international piracy issues was a real-life consequence to the beneficial cultural happenings.
According to Sawyer, cassettes were an incredible asset to the industry. The “cassingle’s” marketing influence within the 1980s is immeasurable and combined with the release of Sony’s Walkman, this new format proved both extremely profitable and portable.
The ability to take music anywhere shook the foundation of the listener’s past experiences and groundbreaking technological developments quickly followed the cassette.
B Boy culture, originating in New York City “spread from its birth in the South Bronx and although DJs used vinyl, Hip Hop fans took their ‘Beat Boxes’ or ‘Boom Boxes’ with them,” Sawyer said. “Playing music at ear spitting volume while balancing huge tape machines on their shoulders and holding impromptu parties.”
With this development came the ability to simultaneously play a pre-recorded cassette in one player and record the same album onto a blank cassette in the second, drastically quickening the process of home taping. Sawyer recalls multiple efforts, such as a UK campaign with the slogan ‘Home taping is killing music and it’s illegal’, where the industry attempted to curb piracy, eventually resulting in police raids of street markets reselling copied cassettes on discount.
“Swapping mixtapes arguably stimulated interest in new artists, when friends created what are now known as playlists for friends, they inevitably contained music that was new to the listener, encouraging them to seek out new artists,” Sawyer said. “My own mixtapes reflected my work as a DJ, taping my sets to try and improve my mixing and of course giving friends my compilations (like all DJs I assumed my taste was better than anybody else’s).”
Just how much money did artists and the industry lose out on due to home taping? It’s impossible to quantify this amount, but one can’t help (wonder)but if this amount outweighed the revenue brought in (by)new fans who had gotten exposure from a homemade mixtape. Regardless of the recent rise in vinyl and cassette sales, many people look to digital playlists for the modern mixtape.
“The very difficulty of producing a cassette mixtape adds to its emotional value, very few people will value a Spotify playlist in the same way they would a lovingly assembled cassette especially if it is decorated with bespoke artwork,” Sawyer stated. “Perhaps, like vinyl it reflects a fans desire to own a piece of the artist, many of the cassettes sold now may never be played and are simply a souvenir.”
On a technology-clad bookshelf, Lucy Swatton’s turntable is playing Currents, Tame Impala’s third studio album. The 2015 psychedelic-pop record was released nearly 20 years after the sale of vinyl records took its first blow to the compact disc (CD). If it weren’t for vinyl’s gradual rebirth in the early 2010s, Currents never would have been produced in this format, nevertheless on the record player of a 22-year-old university graduate.
Swatton likes the idea of “physical music” because it feels more personal. She describes the act of putting on a vinyl as a ritual: “It takes more effort, but for some reason, it means more than just playing a song on your phone.”
She is a part of the generation raised on mom’s burned CDs made off of iTunes digital downloads. People her age practically came to puberty with the invention of the iPod, so it is no wonder how enthusiastically streaming platforms, like Spotify and Apple Music, have been embraced. Personally, Lucy is a Spotify girl and she is not alone in seeing Spotify as a type of social media.
With over 100 playlists available to like and follow, Swatton’s profile is all about the music. Aside from a profile picture, her followers know nothing about the person behind the playlists, and Lucy wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s the least judgemental form of social media. It’s only about the music because we’re into similar songs,” she says. “I can put time and effort into it without feeling embarrassed. It’s nice.”
Hyper specific feelings are the inspiration for her day long playlists, and just by looking at the titles, you can tell the intent behind them. One titled: “Entering the fight and slamming to the ground in an epic superhero pose” is four hours of “badass” anthems like “Barracuda” by Heart and “Just a Girl” by No Doubt. How about “ha hA DANCE!”? Straight disco starting with Earth, Wind & Fire and brilliantly wrapping with The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men”.
The playlist she is most proud of? “20 Something”.
“20 Something is all about growing up and being a young adult and all of the happy and bad things that go with it. It’s easy to get overwhelmed about this part of life, so being able to relate to the songs can make you feel seen,” she told me.
For Lucy, making playlists can be both therapy and the therapist all at once; it helps to clear her head about her feelings.
“Sometimes if a person makes me feel a certain way, I can’t say it to them, so I express it in a playlist,” Swatton said. “A lot of the time, I make one for someone without ever sending it. The songs remind me of how they make me feel.”
It’s precisely this type of therapy that people have been looking to since the original days of the cassette mixtape. This idea is not new, in fact, this is what drew so many people to cassettes in the first place. A mixtape has the ability to speak the unspeakable, to give not only music, but feelings and intentions.
More and more young people have been coming to the stark realisation that “physical music” has a more personal feel. Of course, music on digital mediums allows for endless opportunities and innovation, but there is just something about physically holding the music that have brought both vinyls and cassettes back onto the market. Older generations never forgot the feeling and, with time, the rest of us may figure it out too.