I love The Guardians of the Galaxy. I especially love the air of nostalgia created by Quill's obsession with the 1980s. It is a really funny character trait.
But Quill was abducted from the planet. He uses cassettes because it is the only way he can access Earth music!
That is part of the joke. He is surrounded by all of this tech and he needs to rely on a vintage Sony Walkman. That's funny.
What's not funny is when hipster doofuses try to bring back an inferior and outdated medium just because a dude in a movie uses it.
I bet he likes Beta tapes too.
Is everyone going to toss out their Blu-Ray versions of Guardians of the Galaxy and replace them with tapes on which you have to adjust the tracking every 47 seconds?
Tapes are not vinyl.
Vinyl records have a certain charm because of the unique way they sound.
Tapes suck.
Got a pencil with a new eraser handy. If you don't get the reference, good. That means you never had to deal with fixing a loose cassette tape.
source
How do I know? I had approximately $300 worth of them melt under my back windshield about 25 years ago.
They suck.
Move on.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/8092853/cassette-album-sales-rising-2017