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The Rise of the Mixtape

 

Engineer Lou Ottens. Image courtesy of AD.nl

 

When the compact cassette first debuted, it wasn’t an entirely novel innovation. As its name might suggest, Lou Ottens sought to improve upon the bulky, often unreliable 1958 tape cassette system from RCA.

 

 

The inspiration for innovation came from perhaps the most human desire of all: convenience.  Phillips was interested in a potential market for a portable tape recorder, and after the speaker and batteries, the decreased dimensions hardly left room for the tape itself: a mere 2 x 4.5 inch space. To match the volumetric capacity of vinyl records, designers chose to, in the most analog way possible, compress the audio data in their novel tapes. By opting for a smaller stretch of tape per second of audio – 2 inches of tape compared to the then studio-standard 15 inches – the compact cassette traded some audio quality for the boost in portability.

 

Under pressure from Sony, Phillips allowed the Japanese tech giant license to produce his cassettes payment-free. In doing so, he hoped to cement the compact cassette as a global audio standard, however, it took one more character entering the scene before that would happen: Ray Dolby. Dolby developed a two-step process to remove the degrading “tape hiss” that plagued the technology until then, and with a second, cheaper iteration of the process, the cassette was able to reach new heights.

 

Often times, innovations in media and expanding communication results in an increased cultural exchange – and cassette tapes were no exception. The convenience of compact cassettes enabled a surgency in shared music; should they have the drive, fans of any niche genre now had the ability to share and discover music from nearly anywhere in the world.

 

Graphic courtesy of Converse With Me

 

The aesthetics of the compact cassette have, by all measures, far outlived the technology itself. There was a magic charisma to the painstakingly analog process of recording a mixtape; one intensely romanticized by today’s youth. Releasing “mixtapes” remains a staple of hip hop culture long after several changes in medium, and this generation has effectively found a spiritual successor to exchanging physical tapes in using Spotify playlists (though, admittedly, to less enchanting results). Compact cassette tapes have had a far-reaching hand in shaping the world of music since the 70s, and long after they’ve fallen out of favor, their pivotal impact continues to reverberate throughout the industry.

 

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