The format has been pronounced dead at least twice — once when CDs took over, again when streaming made the very idea of a fixed track order feel quaint. It keeps coming back anyway, in small pressings and secondhand shops and the occasional new release.
Part of the appeal is friction. Making a mixtape takes real time: choosing an order, timing transitions, accepting that once it's recorded, it's recorded. A playlist can be reordered forever, which is exactly why it rarely means as much as a tape somebody committed to.
A format built around commitment
Musicians who still press cassettes describe the format less as retro and more as a filter: anyone buying one has already decided to sit with the whole thing, start to finish, the way the artist intended.
None of this makes cassettes practical. Fidelity is worse, players are harder to find, and a scratched tape doesn't skip a track — it eats it. But the people who buy them say that's beside the point; the format was never really about convenience.