Backward Technology

Am I the only one who's noticed that music-listening technology has taken a decided step backward in the last 10 years?

Sure, you now hold 676,345,223.4 songs in the palm of your hand and shuffle them so you never hear the same song twice. You can instantly download any song you want to hear wirelessly. You can easily store your music and back it up 50 times and only take up the space of a spindle of DVD-Rs.

But I still say cassette tapes knew what they were doing.

Remember when you didn't have to be rolling in disposable income to update your music library? $.99 a song? $1.29???? (Seriously, iTunes??) How about $3.99 for 270 minutes of "Today's Hottest Music"? Because back when technology knew what it was doing, that's what it cost for a 3-pack of blank 90-minute tapes, and that and an entire weekend was all you needed. Walk with me a moment...

You set the boombox on the floor, fast forward the tape a few seconds so you don't miss anything on those few blank seconds before the real tape starts, tune to your favorite station, and wait for the hunt to begin. And it is a hunt, which makes the victory of that free music even sweeter. Wait, what did the DJ just say? That's right, "Runaway Train" is coming up after this commercial break. Get your finger poised over the REC and PLAY buttons (don't forget to push both, or you'll lose valuable intro time correcting) and wait for it.....wait for it.....THERE, GO!

Four hours later, you still haven't heard the song you want? That's okay. Because Request Hour is coming up and you've got your Mickey Mouse phone ready to go, the first 6 digits already punched in. When they open up those phone lines, all you have to do is hit that last button and yours will be the first song played. Just keep those fingers poised over REC and PLAY.

Sure, half your songs include the weather and the call letters from the local radio station over the instrumental intro. But they also have the name of the song and the artist, announced for you....unlike today's music where you have to actually look down at the screen to see what song is coming. And oooh the satisfaction when the DJ doesn't intro the song, and you have a good-as-store-bought version of the song!

And by the end of the weekend, you have your mix tape, full of almost-free music. And let's face it, if you were so broke you couldn't buy a new tape, you still had options. Either tape over the one from a month ago (those songs are so old now anyway), or steal one of the soft-rock crap mixes from your sister's tape box, peel off the label, and put a new sticker on it. Good as new.

And that wasn't the limit of cassette tapes' free music glory. Your friend who gets more allowance than you just bought the new Nirvana tape? You want it too? Two options: If you are one of those unlucky chumps who just have a single cassette deck in your boom box, you simply ask your friend to bring hers over too, face them toward each other, press PLAY on the Nirvana tape and REC and PLAY on the tape you stole from your sister, and voila! Just don't sing along while it's recording, or your crappy off-tune voice and half-wrong lyrics will be on your new tape. Of course, if you are lucky enough to have a boom box with two tape decks and and DUB feature (as I was, best birthday present EVER, MOM!), you just put both tapes in and record ambient-sound free.

Sure, there are a lot of advantages to today's music technology. Your songs don't start to warp when you play them over and over 238 times trying to memorize the lyrics. The music quality is certainly superior. But today's music players are missing that one crucial feature that make cassette tapes rule in my universe: Apple, put an FM tuner on your iPods and include a record function. Is that too much to ask?