Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
The Last Mixtape : Physical Media and Nostalgic Cycles - Seth Long
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

The Last Mixtape

Physical Media and Nostalgic Cycles

By: Seth Long

Hardcover | 16 July 2025 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover


$303.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $75.94 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

A reflection on the evolution of physical media into metaphor, through the history of music curation.

Obsolescence makes the heart grow fonder, at least in the case of the mixtape. Not all technologies are so lucky. Some (say, wax cylinders) fade almost completely from cultural memory. A lucky few pass into metaphor: we still "hang up" our smartphones, "cut" film, and "patch" computer code. As digital streaming completes the obsolescence of physical media, what will become of the humble cassette?

In The Last Mixtape, Seth Long offers a microhistory of music curation, anchored by the cassette, from which he explores the meanings of obsolescence, ownership, nostalgia, and the speed of cultural change. A moving meditation on our relationship with music, memory, and curation in the digital century, Long ultimately calls for a return to the media ecology represented by the mixtape: a world in which media is cheap and abundant but tactile and meaningfully engaged.

More in History

Looking from the North : Australian history from the top down - Henry Reynolds
Borneo : The Last Campaign - Michael Veitch

RRP $34.99

$27.75

21%
OFF
A Short History of Japan : Pelican Books - Christopher Harding

RRP $45.00

$35.75

21%
OFF
Oliver Cromwell : Commander in Chief - Ronald Hutton

RRP $26.95

$22.99

15%
OFF
Huey : The Helicopter That Became an Australian Aviation Icon - Mark Lax
Inferno : Australians on the Western Front - Phillip Bradley

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
Midnight : The story of a Light horse - Mark Greenwood

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Shortest History of Australia - Mark McKenna

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
100 Diaries That Chronicled World Events - Colin Salter

RRP $44.99

$35.75

21%
OFF
On My Watch : Leading NATO in a Time of War - Jens Stoltenberg

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World - Philip Matyszak
Holbein : Renaissance Master - Elizabeth Goldring

RRP $82.95

$60.75

27%
OFF
PIX : The Magazine that told Australia's Story - Margot Riley

RRP $59.99

$47.75

20%
OFF