What I don't quiet understand is why we never went to flash for media distribution.

SD cards are dirt cheap and can hold massive amounts of data. Seems weird that we can't just hand out 128MB SD cards with an album on it.

There were a few attempts, slotMusic is one that comes to mind.

They kind of all were doomed. Why buy a digital music player that couldn't manage music as well as the cheapest MP3 players? These products also felt like an attempt by the flash storage makers to dump older inventory since an album would fit on smaller cards than most consumers wanted. Then the iPod steam rolled the market. The convenience of iTunes, even over poor Internet connectivity, was hard to beat.

iPods became big around 2003. Back then, 128 MB of flash would cost you $40[1]. This was why HDD-backed mp3 players were so revolutionary for the time--flash wasn't viable, yet. By the time flash got cheap enough, portable mp3 players were so established that the time for physical media for audio had mostly passed.

1: https://web.archive.org/web/20030520151144/http://www.newegg...

Yep, the reason why the OG iPod was shaped/sized the way it was, is due to the form factor of commodity laptop hard drives. I forget, but I think the OG iPod had a firewire connector (sort of the equivalent of today's Thunderbolt 3/4), which allowed the owner to use the iPod as a portable hard drive. Most macs had at least one firewire port.

Still got mine. First gen, Mac only, Firewire. Haven't turned it on in a few years, I wonder if it still goes...

2nd and 3rd gen too. I still have a 3rd gen

My guess is digital purchases became easier just before flash memory was cheap enough to use for albums. Also, distribution is much simpler, and the labels can get more profit due to decreased manufacturing costs.

This is my thought too. By the time SD cards were cheap and ubiquitous, digital music already had a huge foothold, and has the convenience of not worrying about losing the SD card.

Bill Gates called it when interviewed about the upcoming Blu-Ray format in 2005. "Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts."

Isn't that what the nintendo switch is doing?

IMO - collectibility is inversely proportional to media and packaging size.

That said, I think the Switch gets it right. If everybody was handing out microSD cards you’d have a nightmare managing those

Sony would want to use their proprietary Memory Stick format

I think speed of production is also a factor. A factory can stamp out CD/DVDs very quickly, flash has to be written out to by a computer.

Finding the best cassette decks these days is a science unto itself though. Lots of mediocre stuff getting put out to ride the hype.

Got myself a Nakamichi BX-300, and I'm kinda blown away by how decent it is. With the price old 80's cassette decks go for today, it seems like you could produce a fairly well spec'ed machine for ~300 and have it sell. Agreed though, most of the stuff produced today is rebadged white label junk; go to a thrift store and pick up something second hand, it's probably better.

Cassettes on the other hand may be another story though, I don't know if the chemistry allows for old metal tapes to be produced anymore.

People in my social circle know I like cassettes and often funnel old collections my way. I just received a box with 85 vintage cassettes. Probably 50% will be unplayable from warping of the outer shell (these are often pulled out of an attic or storage with annual cold/heat cycles). A further 20% won't sound very good.

However those that are in good shape typically sound terrific. The quality of the player is key (most currently produced cassette players are truly awful) and older machines can easily be brought back to life in most cases. Sony's old high-end walkman's are also magnificent for playback.

Metal tapes are hard to find new, but i have repurposed used ones to great effect. I would like to emphasize that even the boring stalwart type 1 cassettes can sound really good. The quality of pre-recorded could be incredibly inconsistent fresh out of the wrapper back in the day and I think this gave them a bad reputation.

Some of my vintage Beetles cassettes, and Peter Gabriel cassettes had extremely high production standards and really hold up. "Peter Gabriel's "Security" was digitally mastered and sounds fantastic.

I was watching the new film "Nobody" and the main character steals a hot rod with a cassette player and rocks out while driving. The rattle of the old cassette and sound of it loading really hit a nostalgia nerve but it was plainly cool. This kind of thing appearing in new media might be one reason people are going back.

After the 80s expired, in Germany, long-form audio dramas [1] transitioned from being produced to vinyl to cassette (the transition to CDs happened amazingly late in the 2000s, and for quite some time both cassette and CD were typically released at the same time). Basically, all my audio dramas are cassette or vinyl.

What I was running up to say: whereas the quality of CD masterings typically was consistent and befitting the medium, many of my audio drama cassettes have quite varying physical qualities. It esp. gets noticable with long-running series such as the "three ???" series; over 100s of cassettes, you can make out the slumps and peaks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama#Germany

Agreed on type 1 tape. I have many that sound great, it actually works really well for bass heavy music like hip hop.

Makes sense that most of the mass produced tapes at the hey day of cassette were inconsistent.

It really is a shame that replacement products that are up to par do not really exist. You'd probably have to persuade a local enthusiast or skilled audio electronics repair man to restore an old deck for you unless you can do everything yourself should you get one. At least, the cheap consumable mechanical parts like belts are available for any make and model under the sun, so keeping one deck running with some care is something even non-enthusiasts can do