Behold, An Old-School Cassette Player That Streams Spotify

Do you love the at-your-fingertips convenience of modern music consumption, but get nostalgic for the days of the cassette tape? One man is having it both ways, by retrofitting an old cassette player to play music via Spotify.

To get the effect seen in the video above, British developer Matt Brailsford loaded a cassette player with a small computer called Raspberry Pi. He then attached near field communication (NFC) tags -- the same technology that lets you pay for things with your smartphone -- to old cassette tapes. The tags signal which Spotify playlist the recorder plays.



Brailsford told CNET that the entire process took him about two or three weeks. Most of that time was spent figuring out how to fill the old cassette player with new components so that the "pause," "stop," "next" and "previous" buttons all work. The old "record" button turns the system on, Engadget pointed out.

Brailsford said he got the idea when a friend showed him an iRecorder, a cassette player-inspired speaker for iPhones.

"That brought back tons of happy memories of creating mixtapes for (potential) girlfriends, and recording the charts every Saturday while trying not to get the DJ's voice in the recording," Brailsford told CNET.

For more detail on how Brailsford made the Spotify-playing cassette recorder, click over to CNET.