Audio cassettes rocked our worlds. Paired with the invention of the Sony Walkman, they kicked open the door on how we listened to and shared music, stomped on our ears, and we loved every minute of it. It was like the invention of fire, or the wheel. We could take our auditory joys with us into the world, a private alternate universe we could sink into on the bus, during class, in the half-pipe, or after a bad breakup. There was no better comeback to a shrill teacher or parent lecture than simply slipping on a pair of headphones.

The mixtape cassette—this new kind of living form of self-expression—was mightier than the sword. That lore still lives on. The old tapes themselves? Not so much. They are falling apart. If you don’t convert cassette tapes to a CD or digital format, the music and the memories will be lost. Legacybox audio cassette to CD or digital format service via thumb drive or delivery through Legacybox Cloud™is your time machine back to all those feelings, those unique-as-a-fingerprint playlists, your live recordings, and the music you can’t find on any other format.

You know it well. The compact cassette (music cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette), was a magnetic tape running between two miniature spools, held inside a protective plastic shell. It came with pre-recorded audio content or as a fully recordable blank cassette tape. It was an evolutionary leap on both accounts: home recording and portable audio. Cassettes were catalysts for social change. Underground rock, hip-hop, and punk music created movements, brought people together, and empowered people to political change and new freedoms of expression.

Most of us have upgraded our music collections from the days we’d hit the record button when our favorite song played on the radio. But most of us have also held on to a few of our favorite cassette tapes. Take stock in what you have. If it was put out by a major record label, it is probably readily available in a better format (CD, digital). If it is from a smaller label, it might be hard to find but if it is a mixtape, a live recording, or those silly fake radio commercials you recorded in your bathroom, those can never be recreated. Those memories can only be preserved, but time is slipping away. You should have more accessibility to your favorite moments. Do your cassettes hiss? Warble? Fade in and out? Is playback uneven? Does the tape player occasionally eat them? Do you even have a tape player? Are the aluminum parts rusting? Is the cassette warped or cracked?

Our technicians are standing by ready to perform CPR on your old cassette tapes by converting them to the digital age. Our cassette to digital transfer service will digitize the content to CD and .wav file. When we are finished, it will be like getting that mixtape from your summer camp crush all over again. Put those headphones on and relive 1985.