When Phillips invented the cassette tape in the early 1960s, no one could have predicted the significance they would have for a generation of music lovers. It took a while for the plastic reels to gather momentum but by the 1980s, thanks to the Walkman, cassettes had revolutionised the music industry.

Culturally though, cassette tapes gave us more than a new musical format. They opened up a world of possibility. They gave us a blank canvas and a new art form; they gave us the technology to make our own mix tapes.

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