Ah, the glory of the mixtape. A selection of songs, collected and shared. A repurposing of others’ creations to form new messages, new meanings. A sonic quilt of sorts. Simultaneously public and personal.Let's revisit the words of mixtape master Nick Hornby (from High Fidelity):
To me, making a tape is like writing a letter—there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind", but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs and... oh, there are loads of rules.
Unfortunately, as new and exciting entertainment technologies arise and make obsolete many things that suck, there are innocent victims as well. Cassette tapes have already been cast aside like so much flotsam (due mainly to their sub-par sonic quality, clunky design and comparably short life span), and with them—the mixtape. Sure, we still have the mix CD, but for how long?
Enter Muxtape. An online service that apparently just launched today. With Muxtape you can upload songs to create a 12-song mix, then send it to your friends as simply as forwarding the link. The one I made today is at markhall.muxtape.com.
According to Muxtape creator JSTN, there were 4,000 songs uploaded by 2,000 users in the first 7 hours. Not too shabby.
Via obsessivecompulsive.
2 comments:
this is the coolest.
Hey! You have a reader! - DY
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