Skylord99

The Mixtape Isn't Dead

I remember spending countless hours grabbing my favorite tracks off records to put onto a cassette tape to listen to in my car or Sony Walkman.  It was lots of fun finding cool songs but it could also be quite frustrating trying to fit that last track onto the end of a C90 cassette, only to get within seconds of getting there and then hearing the tick-tick-tick of the tape deck before it shut off.  There were songs where you had to do fade-outs using the record volume sliders and others where you had to do fade-ins. Then there was that dreaded moment when you heard the tape scrunching up inside the cassette player  and all those hours of work lost - I never did back-ups in those days.

The tape cassette may be gone but the concept of the mixtape is still well and truly alive - it's just that it is now on a digital medium.  Over many years - I have pretty much digitized all of my vinyl LP collection and ripped my cd collection and stored it all onto hard drives on my music server. (now backed up).  Using my beloved Logitech Squeezebox - I can play all of my music over wifi through my stereo system at the touch of a button.  But I still need to take my music out with me (now on an SD card on my phone) when I travel to work, fly somewhere or when I'm out driving.  So.....I still spend countless hours putting together music compilations for a portable selection of my music collection.

I enjoy working off a single song or a theme and building it out so that the tracks compliment each other and come together as a single listening experience.  I like to experiment bringing different genres together with songs that work well together (mostly).  It's very satisfying when you finalise the compilation with a collection of 10-12 songs that gel together and suit a particular mood or occasion. 

So for me - the mixtape is far from dead.