‘It was a way to share your musical experiences’: why cassette tapes flourished, and still endure

Two new books explore the history of the tape and how it helped spread hip-hop, thrash metal and experimental music around the world one mixtape at a time

Everyone who grew up with a tape deck remembers mixtapes, or compilation tapes, as we used to call them in the UK. They remember sitting with a pile of records or CDs, assembling the perfect order, sending the right message. The narrator of Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity, Rob Fleming, had a set of parameters that had to be observed: You can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs, and ... oh, there are loads of rules."

My first girlfriend and I had a cassette," remembers Britt Daniel, frontman of Spoon. She'd put a song on it, then give it to me. I'd keep hold of it for a couple of days, then put a song on and give it back to her. They were all message songs - my communication skills were not top-notch, but it was very sweet."