Bye-bye Spotify, hello cassettes – my week with a Walkman

Music provides a steady soundtrack for my life – every day and in every emotional state. As a kid, I listened to my favourite bands on a Walkman. My memories of this are faint, and technology has changed a lot since then.

These days, I’m a streaming fiend. But is it really better? I’m headed into this throwback to see if I haven’t unfairly banished my cassettes to the shelf.

In search of a cassette player

Listening to tapes for a week is easier said than done. Back in the day, I gave my Sony Walkman to my brother. He used it to listen to mixtapes I made for him until the thing finally died. Retro seems to be in – there are plenty of overpriced (but at least refurbished) options on Ricardo – but most of the decently priced models are broken.

I decide to ask around in my friend group. Et voilà, they come in clutch! It turns out a friend of a friend still has an old, original Sony Walkman at home that I can borrow. It’s in great shape and fully functional.

As a tech journalist, I’m naturally interested in the features:

• The start, stop and pause buttons are haptic!
• You can fast-forward and rewind at the touch of a button – wow!
• The player includes a recording function and built-in mid-range microphone.
• The volume control can be turned up fully without warning.
• There’s a speed control wheel in case I want to listen to AC/DC at double speed.
• Instead of Bluetooth, there are two(!) jacks for your headphones and microphone.
• Viva high voltage: there’s a DC socket for a 3-volt power supply unit.
• There’s room for two AA batteries – that’s all the energy needed.

And my absolute favourite feature: listening to music through the cassette player’s built-in speaker. It’s great for when I’m at home. When I go out, I grab my wired headphones. My Sennheiser HD 25 are usually in use in my band room for mixing and playing electric drums, and they offer great sound. My Walkman week is officially a go!

The Walkman works – but I need cassettes!

The Walkman alone isn’t enough. I need cassettes, too. I’m in luck: my colleague and fellow retro friend David offers to make me a mixtape. I’m excited.

Fortunately, my dad still has his old collection and agreed to lend me some good tapes. Since we have the same taste in music, I grab some Dire Straits, Queen, the Beatles, and Bonnie Tyler.

Walkman in everyday life – when your clothes have to be just right

I’m used to not being able to fit my rather large phone into each pocket. A cassette recorder, though? It’s in a league of its own. I need to figure out the best way to carry it around with me... And now I understand the advantages of denim jackets! My cassette player fits perfectly inside. And I can even make use of my Digitec hoodie, which not only has a practical front pocket, but also a hole in it that I can thread the headphone cable through.

Between haptics and madness

Feeling confident and optimistic, I slot in David’s mixtape. Despite the somewhat older technology, the music sounds good. The headphones are comfortable and the Walkman is tucked away in the front pocket of my sweater like a baby kangaroo. I feel relaxed as I head to the train station to get to the office. David designed his tape to be a mood-lifter. After Jump by Van Halen, I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll is booming in my ears. By the time I get on the train, it’s time to turn the cassette over. I’m pleased with the haptics of it all. There’s something playful about the various buttons on the device.

Over the course of my hour-and-a-half commute, I listen through the tape. I’m not used to this. It’s of a very different dimension than my Tidal playlist of just under 1,000 songs.

This week, I’m not skipping any tracks, even if I could fast forward through a song with a little patience. With a maximum running time of 90 minutes per cassette, the songs will be repeating often enough anyways. It’s worse than radio stations that play the same song three times a day...

After wearing the headphones for longer, I’m not so happy with their comfort. I’m not used to on-ears and they pinch down over time. I also keep getting tangled in the long cable and have to wrap it around the Walkman.

Shopping on foot is also more difficult. Since I’ve got to carry shopping bags, I don’t have a free hand. When the tape ends, I have to take a short break and turn it over to listen to music again. And when songs from less well-preserved tapes play, I can’t understand the lyrics because of the scratching noise.

How did I put up with this back in the day? I suppose I managed simply because I didn’t know of anything better. Oh well. I only have to survive one week.

Between records and streaming

I miss listening to music on my smartphone and my meticulously thought-out playlists on Tidal. The advantages are clear. At home, meanwhile, I throw longing looks at my record collection. The sound on vinyl is much better. I start thinking about why else I prefer records to cassettes.

After all, I also have to tediously flip records over. Not to mention they’re not portable at all, and you can’t create mixvinyls either.

With vinyl, I love the crackle of the needle touching down when I sit down in front of the stereo and concentrate on Pink Floyd’s psychedelic sounds. It’s lively sound reproduction really captivates me.

One last cassette, despite everything

I’m almost through the week. Because I do get annoyed every now and then, I end up listening to less music than usual. But I listen more consciously. In the morning, I decide which tapes to take with me. Inevitably, I think back to my childhood and the times that, in addition to listening to music on my Walkman, I’d fall asleep to my favourite children’s stories.

Back in the day, the Walkman was a toy – and the childhood nostalgia must have got me to put on rose-coloured glasses. What I enjoyed in particular this week was the feel, the physicality of the music. And getting specially made mixtapes is really cool. But the extra baggage and restrictions are a pain. Once again, I’m hit by just how handy having an online music library is.

Content, I listen to my last cassette on Sunday evening. The song Fox on the Run comes on, making me think of the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. Tomorrow, I’ll put together my own sweet mix. Mind you, on Tidal.
Header image: Dominik Kirnbauer