Cassette Tape Adapter Hack

A cassette tape adapter is a way to retrofit new(er) technology such as CDs and MP3s to work with old technology (a tape deck). Simply plug the headphone jack of the adapter into any device that accepts it and one can play music through the tape deck stereo.

I’ve been thinking about the way that the physical format of recorded music has changed over the past 50 years. Records > 8 tracks > cassette tapes > CDs > MP3s… music is undergoing ephemeralization. Each artifact hold more music data  but with fewer materials than the previous generation.

Spotify–a free software application–has made music “vanish” even more. Now, we don’t even have to own MP3 files to listen to music. We can just play whatever we’d like from Spotify’s nearly-comprehensive library. All the music lives on the cloud.

I want to alter a cassette tape adapter to stream Spotify, ideally without connecting it to an iPhone or other device with the Spotify app. I wonder if there’s a way to turn the headphone jack into some type of wireless internet or 3G antenna?

Other ideas:

Can I connect a cassette tape to a USB stick to allow it to play through my computer?

 

Related instructables:

DIY cassette adapter ›

Boombox as iPod charger ›

Cassette adapter as magneto scratcher ›

DIY WiFi radio ›

 

Leave a Reply