I thought it'd be about software tapes, but I'm not surprised - vinyl records are even older and more fragile in many ways, and yet there's still plenty of interest in them, so why not cassette tape.
That's a bit different, though. Of the popular mediums from the last 50 years, cassette tapes are by far the worst in terms of sound quality. Particularly, the noise floor of a tape is absolutely horrible for anything but constant-volume loud recordings. Ever tried to listen to a delicate classical passage on tape? "hissssssssss...". Vinyl would fare far better.
So I'm actually pretty surprised to see a revival of interest in tapes. But I get it: its not about the sound quality. Its about the physicality of the container, about the process of making mix tapes, etc...
(Note: there are a lot of things you can do to drastically improve the sound quality of a tape: buy better quality tape, record at high speed, use DBX noise reduction (dynamic range compression), etc. But this article is talking about the bottom of the barrel: cheap tape which can be played in anyone's walkman).
Cassette tapes are worst in terms of a lot of things. They lack the width and height of vinyl and CD so album art is not as cool. It is difficult and time consuming to skip a track or skip to a favorite track. And they can get "eaten" by the playback device.
I think one of the main reasons cassettes caught on is that people could make mix tapes. Even after I adopted CDs, I always had cassette players and recorders around for mix tapes (until later, when recordable CDs and the computers to record them with became much cheaper).
Any revival (I've literally heard of this from nowhere except the article) is probably due to the nostalgic feel combined with the ability to make mix tapes.
So I'm actually pretty surprised to see a revival of interest in tapes. But I get it: its not about the sound quality. Its about the physicality of the container, about the process of making mix tapes, etc...
(Note: there are a lot of things you can do to drastically improve the sound quality of a tape: buy better quality tape, record at high speed, use DBX noise reduction (dynamic range compression), etc. But this article is talking about the bottom of the barrel: cheap tape which can be played in anyone's walkman).