They had advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of tapes:
- Dubbing something onto a cassette is simpler because it only has one step, versus the ripping then burning of the CD.
- Long playing tapes hold more songs than CDs
- Better physical durability and form factor. In other words, if the mixtape is for listening to in a car, then when you’re done, you can just throw it in the back seat and not care about even putting it in a case, plus the same goes for storing it, the passenger’s seat will do if you’re alone, rather than having to make sure it’s in a case and also having to take it out of a case when first playing it, (sometimes while driving).
Advantages of CDs when making a mixtape are only apparent when you’re giving it to someone:
- It’s easier for them to rip it in turn, and
- If you are planning on listening to it with them when you’re both online, CDs always run at the same speed, whereas cassettes can be ever so different speedwise, so you’re not always in synch with which part you’re both listening to.
Normally, I’d also say that an advantage of cassettes is that they sound different from digital, just like vinyl. Not necessarily better, but CDs by definition are redundant with other digital media, from a sound perspective. Except that the only cassette I’ve bought in the recent revival wasn’t mixed for an old school boombox like I still have. The bass was way too high no matter how I changed the settings on my player. I suspect that they mixed it to sound good on really tiny cassette players, like the ones that were primarily meant to record audio memos. I’m not sure if most other cassettes these days are engineered like that or are more normally mixed. (I am still satisfied with my purchase, however, because it came with a download code, so I can still play it on my PC.)