What’s the fastest-growing recorded music medium? No, not vinyl, and certainly not streaming. It’s the humble cassette. U.S. cassette sales have increased more than eightfold since 2013. Major artists like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga have joined the party, releasing their latest albums on tape.

I didn’t need a trend report to learn this. Several years ago, I sold a box of my old cassette tapes to a local record store. I got $20 for the lot, and I was surprised to get that. A week later, I checked the store’s used tape section and they’d almost all been bought by customers. Oh.

The turntable of life

With The Any Format Music Stereo, no music format is ever obsolete. You can ride the waves of changing fashions, always ready to listen.

It happened with vinyl, it’s happening with cassettes, and it’s in the early stages of happening with CDs. Just a few years ago you couldn’t give used CDs away. Now used CD prices are nudging upward, and thrift store CD sections seem much more picked-over. Against LL Cool J’s advice, you might even call it a comeback.

Smell the memories

Now that music is easier than ever to find on streaming platforms, we’ve started to realize what’s irreplaceable when we dump our physical music collections: all the memories bound up with those objects. The gorgeous artwork of a vinyl LP cover. The little creak a cassette case makes when you open it. Where you were the first time you heard a life-changing album.

These days, there’s no reason to ever get rid of those memories. And if you’re just getting started building - or rebuilding - a physical music collection, there’s no reason to limit yourself to just one format. Pick up whatever version you can find and pop it into The Any Format Music Stereo. Who knows? Someone else’s thrift-store castoff might carry a priceless memory for you someday.