
From Vinyl to Streaming: How music formats shaped our world
Twenty Thousand Hertz
The Rise and Fall of the Compact Cassette
By the mid-80s, more than 50% of all music was purchased on Compact cassette. The quality of a CD versus what was possible with an average cassette deck was an incredible improvement. Final records had over 50 years as the dominant format. By the early 2000s they were already being replaced by MP3s. But while previous formats had improved both quality and convenience, this time the quality was actually worse.
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