The world is populated by hundreds of millions of musicians, but only a handful are heard, even fewer are discussed, and a smaller minority are incorporated into history long enough to be outlived by their music. Artists can spend their entire lives telling the world what innovative instrumentalists they are and how their techniques could inalterably change music, but without the opinions of an audience, there's no social justification for what they are doing. It is not inconceivable for a musician to want to work in a vacuum, and many do, but even those individuals often desire a critical perspective. Whether the artist likes it or not, the merits of the music are determined by the listener through a judging process in which the musician plays no part. In order for a musician to receive this critical reaction, there has to be a way to bring the music to the public.
Cassettes are currently the simplest and most artistically pure way of sharing sounds.
The only tools required are blank tapes, cassette decks, envelopes, and stamps. The peripheral concerns involved in making, marketing, and manufacturing records or CDs are not considerations here. Cassettes are fast, direct, cheap, and limitless, but oddly, they were not always seen as legitimate. Although the cassette has been around for over twenty-five years, its potential has only begun to be fully realized in the last ten. Musicians once viewed the record as the only acceptable medium for distributing their music.