Cassette tapes.

[Argent 88]

Wow, this is really is old technology. Transferring my library over to CD.  While my cassette player still works.

[Ranger99]

Don't have any 8 tracks or
albums left? I have more
than I should

[Argent 88]

And I still have a VCR and some old video tapes, that's another one that became a dinosaur. At least a DVD player won't eat your disk lol.

[Ranger99]

I had a good sized box of
beta, but I think I finally
tossed em out
I've still got too much that
needs to take the same one
way trip

[Bob Riebe]

How Long Do CDs Last? It Depends, But Definitely Not Forever

Back in the 1990s, historical societies, museums and symphonies across the country began transferring all kinds of information onto what was thought to be a very durable medium: the compact disc.

Now, preservationists are worried that a lot of key information stored on CDs — from sound recordings to public records — is going to disappear. Some of those little silver discs are degrading, and researchers at the Library of Congress are trying to figure out why.

..."Everyone always wants to know the answer to the same question, 'How long do CDs last? What's the average age?' " Youket says. But "there is no average, because there is no average disc."

The Library of Congress has around 400,000 CDs in its collections, ranging from congressional records to popular music, and the library regularly gets donations of CDs.

Real estate records and titles were also moved from microfilm to CD beginning in the 1990s all around the country, says Jim Harper, president of the Property Records Industry Association.

"They just made the move because they thought anything that was digital, anything that was electronic, was going to be far superior to anything from the past," Harper says. "And it turns out that that was indeed wrong."

With budgets tight for local governments, Harper says most are not going to be able to move to another form of storage in the near future.

PRIA has been taking Youket out to speak to county officials, to at least make certain they understand the problem they're facing...


...Increasingly, CDs aren't being created at all. The record shops that sold them are going out of business, and new computers don't come with CD drives any more. Even so, many of us still have dozens or hundreds of CDs.

Researcher France says many of them can actually last for centuries if they're taken care of. "The fastest way to destroy those collections is to leave them in their car over summer," she says — "which a lot of people do."

Sadly, your favorite CDs — the ones you've played a lot — are often the ones that are most likely to be damaged.

These days, the Library of Congress is starting to archive material on servers, which France acknowledges could pose an entirely different set of still-unknown problems in the future.

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/08/18/340716269/how-long-do-cds-last-it-depends-but-definitely-not-forever

I had heard this before but when I spoke with broadcast technicians at the Minn. Pavek Museum of broadcast, they told me in detail each new form is shorter term than the one that came before.
They are actually transferring broadcasts to large 3 and 4 inch tape but such tape is getting hard to come by.

[oldandslow]

My wife has a bunch of cassettes with Christmas music on them. She lost one this year as it was dragging and I couldn't get it to quit. I need to transfer them all to a dedicated mp3 player that she can plug into the audio in port while the cassettes left still work. I transferred all my  CDs to an ipod several years ago. Instead of changing CDs I just touch the screen to play what I want. Most of the time I just go to "all music" and choose "shuffle" and let it go through the 900 or so songs on it. The ipod is dead technology now and the smartphone has replaced it but I have it and am going to use it as long as it lasts. I have an old Pioneer sound system in my garage turned shop and I added a blutooth receiver to it where I can blutooth my smartphone which has Pandora, S/XM, and Amazon music on it plus I can connect the ipod without using a cord.

[moamonkey]

Digital is in. My latest vehicle didn't even come with CD; it was an option. Bluetooth is what you get, and it works great. Can't even begin to imagine what's next.