I grew up in the late 80s/early 90s, and my primary playback format was cassette tape, until I was around 12-13 and got my own CD player. I first listened to classic albums like Deep Purple - Machine Head and various Beatles albums on tape, so there will always be a certain nostalgia factor there. I assume a lot of other people around my age feel the same way.

Cassettes might always be around but I think the only reason they saw double digit growth is because the market is so small. However, I can't see somebody choosing cassettes (or for that matter, 8-track cartridges) as the primary format for their music collection in the same way some do with vinyl or CDs.

Oh no no, absolutely not. I only keep a handful of cassette tapes around for nostalgic reasons, and I don't have a tape deck anymore, because it seems rather pointless, as you say.

I just like to hang on to obsolete media that once meant the world to me, so I have a couple of tapes, some 3.5" floppy disks and a couple of MiniDiscs (still shrinkwrapped), purely for nostalgia and maybe one day as something to show the eventual grandkids.

Maybe they miss the sound MCs make after a couple of hot summers in the glove compartment :)

Personally I have many vinyls but the only MCs I have (2 boxes full) contain ZX spectrum games. I wonder how many of them still work, I haven't had it out for a spin in a couple years.

Cassettes have a versatile DIY aesthetic about them: you could record all your sources off radio, TV or CD, sample it into a synth, build up and trade mixtapes, and so on. It isn't just a format for pre-recorded, and digital doesn't really do the same thing since the result of recording into digital is neatly encoded and organized files.

I read once that prisons only use cassettes because optical media can be turned into weapons.