The funny thing here is that vinyls have everything you’re complaining about CDs, but worse.
True enough, but vinyl has its own kind of aesthetic because they were original form of distributed recordings. There is also a good reason they are used for DJing and sampling, you can run turntables off of them and do the sampling live in something approaching an “analog” way. There’s a huge amount of rap and hip-hop culture around working turntables this way, and prior to the creation of rap, party DJs would do this exclusively live.
I can see CDs going the vinyl route in terms of enthusiasm in a couple of decades.
We’re both just trend forecasting here, and either one of us (or neither one of us) could be right.
But as far as unique advantages and tactile feel go, cassettes seem much more likely to eventually be re-introduced. There is something awesome about being able to record on the fly with them, even if they aren’t the best quality…and I, looking back as a person with a large CD collection that only used tapes in my very early youth for listening, genuinely like the cassette format better.
CDs uniquely suck as a portable digital format for listening. I could see some audiophiles continuing to buy expensive “CD transports” or whatever, but it seems much more niche, and much less retro-cool than vinyl or even cassettes do to me.