Lou Ottens, the cassette tape’s inventor, passed away last week. He left a huge legacy for recorded music

A few years ago I was moving house. Cleaning up, getting rid of all the junk (I thought), when I came upon a drawer full of cassettes.

That’s right, the very audio cassettes that Lou Ottens — who passed away last week — helped pioneer back in the early ’60s. It was a treasure trove: Cream, REM, Van Morrison and of course The Rolling Stones.

What to do with them? Or to (nearly) quote The Clash, “should they stay or should they go?”.

I still had a cassette tape player as part of my sound system, that was true. However, the cassettes were clearly inferior technology when I compared them to my CDs.

Then I looked at the…