Sometimes I Miss Cassette Tapes

I live and die by my iPod.

I love the fast clicking of songs. The ease of skipping the tracks I don't like. The ability to add new tunes by the click of a mouse.

Sometimes, though, I miss the old fashioned cassette tape.

First off, cassettes were always cheaper than CDs, so if you were a little short on dough, you had another option if you really needed some new music in a bad way. Second, the format of a cassette meant you either listened to an entire album - or wasted a ton of time searching for your favorite song. It's because of the cassette tape that I know so many B-sides. I was too darn lazy to hunt for songs, so I just popped the tape into the car stereo and let it play.

Remember when cars and boom boxes came out with the functionality to "skip" songs on tapes? Man, that was awesome. Mind you, I never had a car that could do this - but still. I did have a stereo that would let me go back and forth in Hysteria as many times as needed. Great time saver.

Eventually I got a CD player for my car and the cassette player was no more. While flipping CDs was much faster for me, I sometimes found myself missing the cassette tape.

For awhile, labels released singles on CDs but they were usually way too expensive for one song. The cassette single was definitely my friend. I had tons of those. They were usually two bucks or less and - obviously - featured a band's most recent radio hit. To this day I'm still baffled that labels use the term "single" because there really isn't such a distinction anymore. Sure, there are songs released to radio with deliberate planning to sell albums - but it is very rare to walk into a music shop and see a CD single on the shelves. I guess iTunes has replaced this as well.

So, I love my digital music but I also missed the "forced fandom" of some lesser known tracks that cassettes afforded. I remember using my little Walkman on school trips, playing my favorite "mix tape" of the moment while trying my best to block out the noise of the stupid boys inevitably sitting beside me - belching.

Do you ever miss cassettes?