In 1963, Philips introduced the compact audio cassette. It was small, cheap, easy to copy, and impossible to control. For the music industry, it was a nightmare. For everyone else, it was freedom.

In the neighborhoods of New York and Los Angeles, the cassette became the tool that brought hip-hop to the public. DJs and rappers who had no access to record labels recorded mixtapes at home and sold them from car trunks, on street corners, in barbershops, and in subway stations. 50 Cent, DJ Drama, Lil Wayne, and many others built entire careers from tapes passed hand to hand, without any contract.

In communist Romania, the cassette became a window to the West. People copied music from Radio Free Europebroadcasts, then copied the copy, then copied the copy of the copy. Each generation lost a little sound quality, but gained reach.

The cassette never asked anyone for permission. It didn’t need approvals, distributors, or budgets. It put the power to distribute music into the hands of anyone with a tape recorder and a friend. It was the first social network for music.