Physical media returns (2025) | Eva Szilardi-Tierney / Courtesy of the author
For Rox Eckroth and August Simon, the idea of putting together a tape compilation of songs from trans artists came as much from their interest in the history of cassettes as it did from a desire to collate trans art.
“You put a tape in the machine, you hit play. It was the easiest way to record something, and [then] you can hand someone the tape.” August explained in an interview last spring, explaining the history of cassettes’ radical availability and DIY ethos. “It was the easiest, most accessible way to pass on music.”
This might seem a strange claim from members of a generation that grew up sharing music online. Since the days of Napster, the internet has been the obvious place for underground music distribution. File sharing allowed users to skirt record companies and middlemen, and the ability to freely upload music on websites like MySpace created new worlds of opportunity for queer youth to hear each other.
This internet era provided a boon for queer visibility, but it also brought with it mass surveillance, piracy lawsuits, and leviathan, algorithm-driven platforms like Spotify. Now, as social media and online platforms become sites of censorship and surveillance, young queer artists and music lovers are turning again to physical media like zines and tapes as an alternative to the precarity of content on billionaire-owned social media sites. Sharing CDs, tapes, and zines provides protective space for queer folks to curate and archive, and possessing these items is an act of demarcating and holding space for queerness.
T4Tapes is one example. The project was born out of a particular post-pandemic convening of trans musicians and their friends in New York City. Eckroth, fresh from an unfinished undergraduate thesis on how digitization transformed the sex tape, happened to come up with the idea of a physical compilation of trans music at the very same time as Nicole Harwayne, the frontwoman for Brooklyn frogrock band ok, cuddle. Simon put the two in touch, they added Nora Knox of Crush Fund and LJ (“the very important token cis member”), and the first tape was released in May of 2023.
For the T4Tapes collaborators, the cassettes’ physicality is foundational to their ability to preserve trans art for posterity. Eckroth and Simon see the tapes as art objects, material things that once owned, can’t be taken away. This stands in particular contrast to the illusion of ownership offered by streaming services, who have created a media landscape wherein everything is rented and nothing is owned. This lends the cassettes a sense of permanence that becomes more important the more that transness is threatened and/or erased in online and other public spaces.
Artist Brooke Finegold’s zines accomplish a similar task of preserving queer art through the more protective space of physical media. Her zines, Poetry Is Gay and Lesbian Hands, are anthologies of queer art and people, material representations of the communities Finegold has both chanced upon and grown intentionally. Poetry Is Gay collects the work produced in the biweekly gay poetry salon she hosts, while Lesbian Hands compiles photos of the hands of lesbians Finegold meets while out in the world performing comedy, hosting events, and otherwise gallivanting.
“It’s really cool to have this physical form of media where it’s kind of not accessible to people in the outside world,” Finegold says. “I would never put my Poetry Is Gay zine in the lobby of the Presbyterian church I grew up going to, but that’s essentially where it is if I’m posting it on my Instagram. And so with physical media, it’s like you get to pick your actual audience.”
That physical media allows publishers to curate their audiences can be critical for queer communities, where visibility outside of one’s peers can risk harassment, job loss, or outing someone who was not ready to share their identity with the world. This was certainly the case for twentieth-century cross-dressing/trans magazines like Transvestia (published in Los Angeles from 1960 until 1986 and distributed nationwide). Such publications were lifelines for their readers, providing them with advice, recognition, and community. But while these were mostly underground publications, their missions included providing a less-than-tolerant public with real stories from and about gender variant folks.
Even for publishers who are less restrictive about their audience, physical media can make queerness visible in ways that can feel more real, or grounded, than in online spaces. Eckroth spoke about his desire for T4Tapes to reach as many people as possible, and expressed the hope that a young queer person might chance upon one of their tapes in a record store and feel affirmed by the experience of seeing a cassette devoted to trans artists alongside mainstream musicians.
Finegold realized this very hope when she received her printed Lesbian Hands zines back from a shop in Park Slope with a photo and note included that read, in part, “Lesbian hands printed the lesbian hands zine, couldn’t help but to add my own.” In their separate ways, the physicality of these artists’ works served as a beacon and point of connection for other queer folks out in the world.
This is to say nothing of the community-building that distributing physical media makes possible. Zines, cassettes, CDs, and other DIY merchandise are usually procured through in-person venues—be they concerts, fairs, salons, or brick and mortar storefronts. Purchasing one of these items requires vocalizing your interest to another person, and that person must then receive that interest and hand you the item. Even if no words are spoken, a connection is forged through that very simple interaction. And because the person selling or giving you the item is so often the person who made it, a conversation is often started through that exchange. Common interest is established and, in the best cases, friendships begin. Finegold shared that most of her closest friendships in New York have come through hosting Poetry Is Gay events and sharing her zines.
These networks of connection grow even when the creators are not directly selling or sharing their wares. Simon and Eckroth note that some of the bands featured on the cassettes take extra tapes on tour with them to share across the country. Word of their project eventually reached another bicoastal music collective called Enby Party, who sent them a goodie box of stickers and tapes. Finegold stocks some of her zines in a home goods store in LA and loves receiving photos of the displayed zines from admirers who are either discovering her work for the first time or are excited to find Poetry Is Gay on the opposite coast.
Of course, even the most dedicated distribution network can’t compete with the ease of connectivity offered online. Instagram, TikTok, and Discord (or, increasingly, Signal group chats) are the starting points for most people seeking other LGBTQ folks, particularly for people who live outside of metropolitan areas or otherwise lack the ability to physically connect. In these (and indeed most) cases, physical ephemera is just a supplement to the online lifeblood of queer community.
Still, there is something intangibly meaningful about holding a piece of art in your hands, especially in contrast to experiencing it through a screen. Unlike the endless scroll of social media or streaming services, physical media forces you to make intentional choices about the things you want to share your space with.
As any collector knows, there is only so much space in an apartment, and this restriction forces you to curate. And as Sara B, who works with the New York art/radio/zine DIY collective 8-Ball, points out, there’s something additive about the sensory experience of reading a zine. A zine has a texture and a smell; it has pages to turn; interacting with a zine requires you to mark time in a way that staring at your phone does not.
The mainstream, profit-driven industry is taking note too. The market for 4K Ultra HD discs is growing, vinyl sales have grown every year since 2006, and earlier this year Pitchfork announced a new quarterly, print-only zine series. Ahead of the first issue’s release, Pitchfork’s head of editorial content, Mano Sundaresan, wrote, “Nothing feels real anymore, so we need these things to hold onto.”
