- Gadhouse announces its new Miko portable cassette player
- Modern features in a retro chassis
- As the digital detox continues apace (especially in music), it makes sense
First, hipsters came for vinyl. Then the hipsters came for the CDs. And over the last few years, hipsters have gone a little further back in time to bring back the humble analog cassette player, proving that until wax cylinders are back in common use, they won’t rest.
In the last year, we’ve seen Barbie-colored players that come with styli to rewind your tape, FiiO-built Walkman imitators with modern features, and even boomboxes that will let you create mix cassettes like you’re listening to the Sunday night charts again. And now audio maker Gadhouse has an option that looks like some variety of retro tech.
This new item is the Miko Cassette Player, which retails for just $99/£59 (around AU$120). It’s available to purchase only right now, but there is an option that bundles the Miko player with some Gadhouse headphones arriving at the end of the month.
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As you can see, Miko plays cassettes, but it also has some modern features. It can be sent to headphones via Bluetooth 5.3, record from a cassette, let you record through a microphone (like an old-school dictaphone), and connect for charging via USB-C (or do it the old-fashioned way, with two AA batteries).
According to the brand, the Miko was designed to evoke the design of Japanese technology between 1985 and 1995, and gives off that retro technology, vaguely Sony Walkman vibe.
Ca-settle in, there’s more
As someone who frequents second-hand shops (also known as thrift stores or charity shops), it’s not difficult to find countless CDs for sale and plenty of records too. According to a source who works in a charity shop, many of them are donated all the time and many are destroyed because there is so little demand.
What I don’t see often are cassettes, although my audio editor tells me that outside the UK capital that is changing dramatically. Hipsters can easily get their hands on other physical media that’s making a comeback, but sometimes it’s hard to see how (or why) they’d pick up on these potentially complicated, slightly hissy, warm-sounding things. Maybe it’s the reassuring cluh-thud From loading them into the slot and closing the door, or the rewarding feeling of pressing real mechanical buttons?
The fact of the matter is that more and more companies are launching cassette music players; Sometimes it feels like we are back in the 2000s because of the number of people joining the market. I recently tried out an MP3 player and wrote about how I still use my iPod Classic; I’m part of the growing wave of people like my audio editor (whose digital detox continues), abandoning music streaming for more traditional solutions.
Part of it is the nostalgia factor for this kind of old technology, but a big part of the drive is the rapidly worsening rejection of subscription-based entertainment. I think a certain dirty word was coined to describe the problem, and you won’t find any AI waste on a cassette album. It seems like everyone hates modern technology right now, right?
And I understand it. When you try to entertain yourself online right now, you are subject to increasing prices for services, worsening features, advertising everywhere (even in things; This summer’s big blockbuster is a Skittles commercial set in the space (two and a half hours long), and gallons of AI crap that are enough to dissuade you from these services. And what do you get for the increased subscription costs? Companies seemingly waste it on more AI nonsense and the nagging feeling that the bands you love are getting squeezed further and further.
So it’s easy to see why people are coming back to owning OG media. Physically owning your CDs/records/cassettes (as well as the technology to play them) and enjoying them on your own terms may seem better than paying increasing costs for a streaming service that seems to give you less and less.
While the resurgence of cassettes and their portable players still seems like a pretty crazy turn for the mid-2020s, I can at least understand why it’s happening.
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