Cassette.app

Spotify has been sucking for years. I kept paying because switching felt like effort, and honestly I didn't know what I'd switch to. But it kept getting worse. Podcasts jammed into my music feed. An algorithm that decided I want to hear the same four songs every week, and now AI-generated tracks showing up in playlists — made by nobody, for nobody.

The whole thing started feeling like when a pub you used to go to a lot gets bought by a chain and they keep the sign but change everything inside.

I thought about getting an MP3 player. One that would exist in the meatspace. Load songs, carry it around, forget streaming platforms exist. But that's another gadget in my pocket, another one to fucking charge.

One late night, after too much coffee (a recurring theme in my life, if you've been around), I remembered internet radio stations existed.

Not Spotify radios. Shoutcast stations. The kind you'd find on directories that looked like they were built in Frontpage 98, with broken images and weird categories nobody understood. Winamp skin vibes.

I used to spend hours on these back in the early 2000s. EBM and goth streams from Germany. Black metal from Poland. Ambient from... I don't know where. Scandinavia? The stations didn't always say. And it didn't matter. Someone on the other side of the world was running each one, picking what to play, and you'd just tune in.in.

I missed that.

Opening it should feel like looking at a tape deck. The UI ended up all black, dithered textures, grey lines. No color. The tape reels spin, and the music plays. Then I decided I wanted it to sound like a cassette player.

Result: I spent a shit ton of time working on the audio filter. I went full chain on it (this is where I lose people at parties, but ok).

Wow and flutter for the pitch wobble you get from a worn motor. Tape saturation so the signal clips soft instead of hard. High-frequency roll-off, because tape eats treble. Hiss on top. Frequency shaping to push the mids forward and muffle everything a little, the way a cheap deck from the 80s would sound.

I had a Gradiente growing up; a brazilian knock-off brand that looked like it was designed by someone who'd seen a hi-fi device in a photocopied magazine and also never touched one.

I loved how the sound came out. So fucking much.

After about a week I had it running while all the time while I worked. Goth station from Leipzig. Drone and Powernoise from eastern Europe. Pudsey Clough Radio.

Each stream sounded different through the filter. Stations that were flat in a regular player had this texture now, like someone had dubbed them onto a Type II cassette in 1993 and I found the tape in a box in my closet.

Then I realized I hadn't touched my own collection in over a week. I replaced one problem with another.

The solution? A net radio station. My own. Named it Espresso Obscura, which is a ridiculous name but makes me smile. It has autoDJ shuffling through a folder of MP3s on my server, 24/7.

Anything I'm into lately goes in the folder (right now it's a mix of weird metal, HEALTH, and a Japanese chiptune dungeon synth project I can't read the name of). That's the whole system. The station is for cassette.app only. No one else can hear it.

Now I flip between the stations and Espresso Obscura depending on what I feel like. The tape filter is on everything. It reminds me of running a BBS in the 90s. You'd build something in your bedroom for yourself and like four other people, and that was enough.

I ported it to iOS after a couple weeks because I wanted it on the go. Works great. It's a walkman that's connected to a goth club in Berlin and to a folder on my server in Rio.

I'm not releasing this. Might give it to some friends. But I like that it's only mine. My trashy cassette net radio player.

Espresso Obscura on, hiss up, black coffee going cold next to my laptop.