I’m a huge fan of records, so for me to listen to an album on vinyl for this project would be kind of silly. But recently there’s been a trend of bands selling their albums on tapes, which is kind of strange to me, so I figured I might as well check out what listening to a tape is like in comparison to vinyl or digital. I only have one tape that I stole from my dad. I’m not really sure where it came from because my dad is in no way a “dead-head”. I’ve never actually listened it before, but my record player has a tape player built into it so this wasn’t a difficult thing to be able to do.

       I grabbed the tape and tried to shove it into the small slot into the side and I ran into my first problem: how does this fit in? I shoved that small tape into the player at least 5 different ways until it finally pushed into the slot. Yet, when it went in, nothing played. I pressed play, changed the settings but still nothing. I sat there bewildered wondering how this thing works. I decided to go along with the full analog experience and use my good old trial and error skills rather than googling it. It then hit me: don’t tapes need to be rewound? Next to the slot is this weird button that protrudes out. When you push it half way it rewinds the tape for you. I only noticed cause when I was playing around with it, I heard the small hiss of the tape spinning. I sat there on the floor for about two minutes as the tape hissed, and finally, it popped out. It didn’t look fully rewound but I was too confused to try again. I pushed the tape all the way back in and the music started to play.

Nearly 15 minutes later, I’m finally listening to the music. Maybe I’m just incompetent, but to me thats far too long to set up music. With a vinyl record you just simply lay it on the table and drop the needle, which can’t take more than a couple of seconds or for digital, you simply press play. The quality of the music wasn’t that amazing either. It was like listening to a bad quality youtube video. What appeals to me with records is the cracking and popping. You can literally hear everything on a record whether it be dust or a scratch. That noise is so unique to your record and that makes so much more of an intimate experience. I felt nothing special with this tape; I was more annoyed with how cumbersome it is to play.

The only thing that makes a tape better than a record is its size. In comparison to digital, the tape is just slightly more lo-fi and much more inconvenient. I think what is cool about tapes though that digital does not offer is the aesthetics; it’s simply cool looking. Tapes in general also provide for more personalization, similar to a blank CD. One could easily and cheaply buy a blank tape, make a cover, and record a playlist. While you can make a digital playlist, theres something so much more genuine about a physical object.It’s similar to why getting a hand written letter seems so more more personal than getting an email that contains the same words. I think because working within the digital world is significantly easier, and the easiness removes the feeling that someone put deep thought and effort into it. Despite this, I feel if I had to choose between only listening to tapes, or digital music, I would choose digital. Tapes are simply just too annoying to rewind, break easily and don’t even sound that great.