imho in a weird way cassettes were better/more fun. Like wanting to record a song you like so you’d sit in front of the tape deck for hours on end listening to the radio waiting for that ONE song to come on so you could record it. It would take you hours, maybe even days, to make that mixtape of songs you didn’t own.

Also when I was a kid I had one of those fisher price tape decks that had the microphone attached to it. I wanted to make a mix tape of all my favourite songs from my NES games or games that I would rent (like the Battletoads theme song, or the music from the Batman videogame) so I would pop the game in then hold the microphone up to the TV speaker and record the songs.