The Old-School Mixtape Is Back

The 2014 blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy opens in the year 1988 on planet earth with a small boy listening to a mixtape cassette on a Walkman. Cut to the next scene, “26 years later” on an “abandoned planet”: The boy has grown up to be Chris Pratt, still listening to the same old mixtape. It’s basically a sight gag—an intergalactic scavenger with a Walkman? Absurd! Except, suddenly, the cassette seems to be back.

Alongside the decade-long resurgence of vinyl records, music sales on cassette increased 74 percent in 2016, from just 74,000 in 2015 to 129,000 last year, according to Nielsen’s yearend music report, after the industry all but stopped releasing tapes in about 2000. Most of these sales are familiar chart-topping albums by Justin Bieber and The Weeknd; but as the ranks of tape listeners swell, they’re beginning to return to the beloved mixtape as well.