The Mixtape Rebellion

I rediscovered music through cassettes

One day I was listening to my Discover Weekly, which I do every week to discover new songs on Spotify. I really liked one song. I put it in my Likes and I was curious about the artist because the music was Haitian. I thought that's cool, let's look at the people who made that.

Twenty albums. In January 2026. We were in January 2026.

What the fuck?

The covers all looked the same. When I looked carefully, the covers were AI generated. As were ALL the songs of the "artist"

For years I told people that Spotify was the best ten euros a month I ever spent. Discover Weekly was sacred to me. Every Monday, a new batch. I trusted it.

But I got scammed. without my consent, Spotify is now pushing for AI music in my discovers ( they say they are victim of spamming, but they are also buying AI labs as far back as 2017 and in 2025 builded a ”state‑of‑the‑art generative AI research lab and product team” )

But the anger wasn't at Spotify. The anger was at myself. Because when I looked honestly at my recent listening, It has been drifting. More and more basic music over the years. Not too high, not too low, no screams. Good vibes. The kind of music that's not too anything. And I realized: that's exactly what AI slop sounds like. My taste had been slowly shaped toward the exact kind of music a machine can produce. I didn't even notice.

Now I noticed. And I cannot open Spotify anymore.

I don't like my playlists anymore. I don't like the sounds that come out of Spotify. I am totally burned out of these boring sounds. There is still great music out there, and all music is on Spotify, so of course Spotify is full of good music. The problem is that I got trapped into laziness, and my emotional connection with Spotify is now totally ruptured. I need something else because I cannot live without music.

The cure

There is a guy called Austin Kleon, which I recommend that you follow. He's a crazy creative and I have all his books. Every month he makes a cassette with a cassette deck. Old school technique from the '70s and '80s where you record your own cassette with an audio input and create your own mixtapes. Every month a new mixtape and a little collage on the cover. It's very nice.

I always thought, "what's the point? I have Spotify." Well, now I understand the point.

As music becomes so easily accessible, it becomes a commodity worth nothing.

There is a beautiful phrase I red in a poetic book I love called "The Dog, The Wolf, and God." It says, talking about water, that water is the elixir of life, and you have to not drink it for days to understand how delicious and how powerful it truly is.

It's all about commodity. If you have something all the time, you don't realize how good it is. But if you have to fight for water, you will find it the most delicious thing on the planet. Because it is.

Music is the same. If it's a commodity present at every second of your life, it's worth nothing. But if it's something you have to fight for, find cassettes, record your own songs, flip the disc after 45 minutes, change cassettes every 90 minutes, it becomes something precious.

I had my doubts. Until I decided to try.

What About an Experiment?

Everybody thought I was stupid. A cassette deck? In 2026? That thing is going to be a big monster sitting on your shelf collecting dust. Most people I talked to had this reaction.

I had the same doubt.

But I keep a journal I call Tiny Experiments. A blank book. Every time I have an idea I want to try, I write it down. Because everybody has good ideas. You just never do them. "That's stupid." "It's useless." "It'll cost money for nothing." "You should focus on your job."

Reframing an idea as a tiny experiment removes it from your identity. If I say "I want to be a cassette guy" and it fails, my identity takes a hit. But if it's just experiment #7 in a journal? The stakes drop. Try and fail and it costs you nothing but the experiment itself.

I looked at my bank account. I looked at the budget for a cassette deck. Two hundred euros. I can always sell it back for at least 150. A fifty-euro bet on myself.

Seven Mixtapes in One Week

Found a cassette deck secondhand. Met a passionate seller and discovered there's a whole world of cassette people out there. Got a small Marshall speaker. Brand new, but it looks vintage. Sounds great. Looks great in the apartment.

Then the flow hit.

Three hours gone. Finding music, finding the right recording, hunting for live versions on YouTube. I thought I'd need to download FLAC files and deal with complicated setups. YouTube gives you everything. Live recordings, rare performances, different versions of the same song.

I made a Woodstock mixtape. I researched the entire event. I found the announcements they made between sets and wove them between the songs. When you listen to the tape, you feel like you're there. It honestly feels like being an artist.

A country mixtape with a live session around a campfire where you can hear the fire crackling and the crickets in the background. A jazz mixtape with all my favorite hits, live. The full Queen concert at Wembley, recorded straight through. My favorite concert of all time: Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall. An Indian music mix for dance practice. A sleepy time jazz tape.

One week. Seven mixtapes. The thing that was supposed to collect dust.

I play them for my girlfriend and give commentary. I try to put her into the scene. It's storytelling. The sound is warmer and not as perfect, and everyone who has listened says the same thing: it's just a different sound. More alive.

Experiment #7 is a huge success.