Amethyst Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I have shoe boxes full of old cassette tapes. At this point we mostly use iTunes. I've been able to convert CDs to iTunes, but cassette tapes? I guess they're hopeless. Sort of like albums. I'm cleaning a corner where these tapes have been sitting since we moved to this house 3 years ago. Some of them are great albums, so it sort of saddens me to think of throwing them away. I guess I should. Maybe I should just start by throwing out the lame ones. No one is going to miss lullabys or Ladybug tapes. But my gosh, Springsteen? Neil Young? Crosby Stills and Nash? It seems so...disrespectful. And Oh my, I sure did love those years listening to Odds Bodkin with the kids. (Sniff). But the dust is getting heavier. Maybe there's room in the basement... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catwoman Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 I donated mine to a church thrift shop. I'm sure they probably collected dust for a while and then the thrift shop threw them in the trash. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carrie12345 Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 If you love them, re-buy them on CD or MP3. Or even vinyl! (Dh just picked up the Billy Joel album I've been wanting.) But toss the tapes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Do you still have a Walkman or cassette tape player? You can connect the sound out to your computer and convert them into mp3. I forgot what software I used but the below link explains how to do it. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/audio/3417318/how-convert-audio-tapes-cd-or-mp3/ There used to be boombox which takes cassette tapes and would burn a copy onto a cd. You could ask around if anyone has one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aggieamy Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Toss them. If you try listening to them you'll be disappointed compared to hearing them as an mp3 or a CD. The music won't be gone just the 'stuff' that's hanging around taking up space. If you are feeling really sentimental take a few snapshots for a scrapbook album and make a page out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baseball mom Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Dh was in disbelief when I put all our cassettes out in a yard sale for 25c each. I told him we didn't even have a cassette player anymore. He got over it. Did the same with our vhs tapes. Didn't have a player, tired of looking at them. Anything that didn't sell went straight to Goodwill. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spryte Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Buy them in the format they'll be used. If they can't be replaced that way, convert them to a format you can use. Then freecycle or donate them. That's what we've done, not sure if there are better ideas out there. But just think - getting them out of your house means reclaiming some square footage! Yay! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Night Elf Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 We tossed ours a while back. We bought itunes of the albums we could replace. The rest was just old stuff that we had no interest in listening to anymore. I need to do this with old computer games next. I've been putting it off but they aren't compatible anymore and are taking up room in my closet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 18, 2014 Share Posted March 18, 2014 Do you still have a Walkman or cassette tape player? You can connect the sound out to your computer and convert them into mp3. I forgot what software I used but the below link explains how to do it. http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/audio/3417318/how-convert-audio-tapes-cd-or-mp3/ There used to be boombox which takes cassette tapes and would burn a copy onto a cd. You could ask around if anyone has one. The software we use is called Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/ It's time consuming, so you probably don't want to do your whole collection, but it was so worth it for tapes of our adult kids singing and making up stories when they were little ds's age. I bought Terrapin Station and After the Gold Rush on vinyl. Then I bought the same albums on 8 track. Then I bought the same albums on cassette. Now I the recording industry wants me to buy the exact same music by the exact same artists on CD. Converting formats is "fair use" even though the sound quality isn't as good as illegal downloads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Posted March 18, 2014 Author Share Posted March 18, 2014 Amidst the pile of cassette tapes, there were also plenty of CDs. I'm having my daughter put those on iTunes. But it reminded me that on each album there are generally a few songs that I listen to. The others I could probably live without. So maybe for the cassettes, I'll figure out which songs I like on each tape and buy those on iTunes. There might be an occasional album that I'll buy in its entirety (Don McLean American Pie comes to mind...I love every single song on that album and it takes me back to long rides home after visiting boyfriend turned dh), but mostly I could buy 1 or 2 songs on each album without going broke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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