Kick It Old School With This Spotify Cassette Recorder
The cassette recorder: the audio device that was held up to radios everywhere to create the infamous mixtape. Known for igniting teen romances, it allowed one to put all their feelings out there — reel to reel, stored within a cassette. If you recall carrying one of these contraptions then you know just how cool they were, and if not, oh my god you must be young.
We’re all about the ol throwback, and bringing back a retro fave for today. While we wait for the Discman to skip back into our lives, developer Matt Brailsford created the next best thing: a tape recorder that records Spotify.
Brailsford, inspired by the iRecorder as it “brought back tons of happy memories of creating mixtapes for (potential) girlfriends and reminded me of how substantial these types of players were back then,” reworked an old tape recorder into a Spotify player with cassette tapes and the whole kit and caboodle. The buttons work, so there’s no need to rewind with the end of a pencil. The recording button is no longer the magic mixtape maker, but has been retrofitted as the power switch.
To transform a cassette player into a Spotify player, Brailsford gutted the recorder’s standard components and added in a Raspberry Pi, an NFC tag reader (Near Field Communication, a wireless technology which stores and transfers data) and a circuit board (which he devised himself). The Raspberry Pi runs on Pi MusicBox which is described as “the Swiss Army Knife of streaming music on the Raspberry Pi.” Essentially, it lets you create a cheap way to stream music for Spotify and other services.
To get the party started, load one of the cassettes into the player and the tape’s NFC is read to play a specified Spotify playlist. You can even flip the cassette over and play a different playlist on the flipside — welcome back, A and B sides.
Embrace the nostalgia with us and watch it in action below:
So, what do you think, is the cassette recorder making a comeback? Spin us your thoughts in the comments below.
