- Gadhouse announces its new Miko portable cassette player
- Modern features in a retro chassis
- As the digital detox continues apace (especially in music), this makes sense
First, hipsters came for vinyl. Then the hipsters came looking for CDs. And in recent years, hipsters have been reaching back a little further in time to reclaim the humble analog cassette player, demonstrating that until wax cylinders are back in common use, they won’t rest.
Over the past year, we’ve seen Barbie-colored players that come with pencils to rewind your tape, Walkman knockoffs built by FiiO with modern features, and even boomboxes that will let you create mix tapes like you’re listening to the Sunday night charts again. And now audio manufacturer Gadhouse is offering an option that resembles a certain strain of retro technology.
This new item is the Miko Cassette Player, selling for just $99/£59 (around AU$120). It’s available to purchase on its own at the moment, but there is an option that bundles the Miko player with Gadhouse headphones that should arrive by the end of the month.
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As you can see, the Miko plays cassettes, but it also has some modern features. It can output to headphones via Bluetooth 5.3, record from cassette, let you record through a microphone (like an old-fashioned dictaphone), and plug in to charge via USB-C (or do it the old-fashioned way, via two AA batteries).
According to the brand, the Miko was designed to evoke Japanese tech design between 1985 and 1995, and it gives off that retro-tech, vaguely Sony Walkman vibe.
It’s settling in, there’s more
As someone who frequents second hand stores – that is, thrift stores, charity shops – it is not difficult to find countless CDs for sale as well as numerous records. According to a source who works in a charity shop, far too many of them are given away all the time, and many are destroyed because there is very little demand.
What I don’t see often are cassettes, although my audio editor tells me that outside the British capital the situation is changing radically. Hipsters can easily get their hands on the other physical media that are making a comeback, but it’s sometimes hard to see how (or why) they would pick up these potentially delicate, slightly hissy, warm-sounding things. This is perhaps a reassuring sign.snap loading them into the slot and closing the door, or the rewarding feeling of pressing real mechanical buttons?
The fact is that more and more companies are releasing cassette music players; it sometimes feels like it’s the 2000s again due to the number of people joining the market. I recently tested an MP3 player and wrote about how I still use my iPod Classic; I’m part of a growing wave of people like my audio editor (whose digital detox continues), abandoning music streaming in favor of more old-school solutions.
There’s partly a nostalgia factor for this type of old technology, but much more significant is the rejection of subscription-based entertainment, which is rapidly deteriorating. I believe a certain swear word has been coined to describe the problem – and you won’t find any AI-slop on a cassette album. It seems like everyone hates modern technology right now, right?
And I understand. When you try to entertain yourself online right now, you are subject to rising service prices, degraded features, advertising everywhere (even In things; this summer’s blockbuster is a two-and-a-half hour space commercial for Skittles), and gallons of AI garbage that’s enough to put you off these services. And what do you get in exchange for increasing subscription fees? Companies seem to be squandering it with more AI nonsense and a nagging feeling that the bands you love are getting squeezed more and more.
So it’s easy to see why people are returning to OG media ownership. Physically owning your CDs/discs/cassettes (along with the technology to play them on) and enjoying them on your own terms may seem better than paying ever-increasing costs for a streaming service that feels like it’s giving you less and less.
While the resurgence of cassette tapes and their portable players still seems like a pretty crazy twist for the mid-2020s, I can at least understand why this is happening.
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