Mixtape

A mix tape (commonly the two words are stuck together as mixtape), or mixed tape, is a homemade compilation of songs (typically copyrighted pop music taken from other sources) recorded in a specific order onto a compact audio cassette, generally intended for private use, as a soundtrack to social events, or as a gift. (Recent advances in technology have also allowed a mix of songs to be created and distributed in the form of a compact disc or MP3 playlist, but the term mix tape will be used throughout this article.) Mix tapes, which usually reflect the musical tastes of a single compiler, can range from a casually selected list of favorite songs, to a conceptual mix of songs linked by a theme or mood, to a highly personal statement tailored to the tape's intended recipient. Essayist Geoffrey O'Brien has called the personal mix tape "the most widely practiced American art form," and many mix tape enthusiasts believe that by carefully selecting and ordering the tracks in a mix, an artistic statement can be created that is greater than the sum of its individual songs, much as an album of pop music in the post-Beatles era can be considered as something more than a collection of singles.

 

History

In all likelihood, the first homemade mix tapes began to appear soon after the introduction of the compact audio cassette by Philips at the 1963 Berlin radio show. Before the introduction of the audio cassette, the creation of a pop music compilation required specialized or cumbersome equipment, such as a reel-to-reel player, that was often inaccessible to the casual music fan. As cassette tapes and recorders grew in popularity and portability, these technological hurdles were lowered to the point where the only resources required to create a mix were a handful of cheap cassettes and a cassette recorder connected to a source of prerecorded music, such as a radio or LP player. The growth of the mix tape was also encouraged by the use of audio cassette players in car entertainment systems, and by the introduction of the Sony Walkman in the late 1970s.

A distinction should be drawn between a private mix tape, which is usually intended for a specific listener or private social event, and a public mix tape, or "party tape," usually consisting of a recording of a club performance by a DJ and intended to be sold to multiple individuals. In the 1970s, such DJs as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, Kool Herc and the Herculoids, DJ Breakout, the Funky Four, and DJ Hollywood would often distribute recordings of their club performances via audio cassette, as well as customized recordings (often prepared at exorbitant prices) for individual tape purchasers. One 12 October 1974 article in Billboard Magazine reported: "Tapes were originally dubbed by jockeys to serve as standbys for times when they were not in personal use of disco turntables. They represent each jockey's concept of programming, placing, and segueing of record sides. The music is heard without interruption. One- to three-hour programs bring anywhere from $30 to $75 per tape, mostly reel-to-reel, but increasingly on cartridge and cassette." Club proprietors, as well as DJs, would often prepare such tapes for sale.

Throughout the 1980s, mix tapes were a highly visible element of youth culture. However, the increased availability of CD burners and MP3 players and the gradual disappearance of cassette players in cars and households have led to a decline in the popularity of the compact audio cassette as a medium for homemade mixes. The high point of traditional mix tape culture was arguably the publication of Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity in 1995. Since then, mix tapes have largely been replaced by mix CDs and shared MP3 playlists, which are more durable and require minutes (rather than hours) to prepare. While some mix tape enthusiasts bemoan the obsolescence of the cassette tape, others concede that the greater convenience offered by the mix CD has expanded the possibilities and accessibility of the medium, as indicated by the recent resurgence of mix-swapping clubs that trade mix CDs by regular mail. Some mix enthusiasts also appreciate the potential of the mix CD for extended, continuous mixes and creative album art.

 

Terminology

The term mix originally referred to the recorded output produced by mixing sounds from different audio sources on a broadcast or cinematic soundtrack, or in the recording studio. (The earliest citation of this use by the Oxford English Dictionary is from a 16 March 1932 issue of Wireless World.) Subsequently, it also referred to a live audio mix produced by a club DJ, who would attempt to seamlessly blend two pre-recorded songs by using beat-matching and pitch control. A mix tape was the reel-to-reel or cassette recording of such a performance. The term was later applied to more rudimentary homemade mixes, despite the fact that few amateur mix tape enthusiasts were technologically capable of producing a true "mix" between songs, although many did place a great deal of emphasis on song transitions. Mix tape and mixed tape are usually seen as interchangeable variants, although each term has its defenders.

A distinct usage of the term mix tape refers to a demo tape prepared by a hip-hop DJ or MC. The earliest hip-hop albums were a natural evolution of the commercial DJ mix tapes that emerged in the 1970s, in which DJs would often introduce themselves and others in the audience by rapping in time to the beat. Over time, some of these tapes came to feature MCing even more than DJ mixes of existing songs, and were widely traded in underground record stores or on the street. The historical origins of such tapes are reflected in the continuing use of the term mix tape to refer to a demo tape or CD by a hip-hop artist, even when the tapes consist largely of original material primarily intended to show off the skills of an MC. One can also see the traces of this usage in the titles of such albums as Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape by Me'shell Ndegeocello. (Given that DJs and MCs were originally drawn to the compact audio cassette because of its convenience as a medium for home recording, the use of the hip-hop mix tape as a means of creating and distributing original music shares some characteristics with the distinct phenomenon of cassette culture.)

 

Mix tapes vs. compilations

Many commercially available compilations of pop music, such as those in the consistently best-selling Now That's What I Call Music! series, initially seem to share certain important characteristics with mix tapes. Like many private mixes, a significant number of the earliest pop LPs were essentially collections of popular singles, and such compilation albums have often taken cues from underground mixes of the same era. (One example is Disco Par-r-r-ty, the first nonstop dancing LP record, which was released by Spring Records in October 1974. Consisting of a continuous mix of songs by such artists as James Brown, Mandrill, and Barry White, it was clearly inspired by the bootleg DJ mixes that were becoming popular at the same time.)

However, the relative anonymity of the compilers of such albums is arguably inconsistent with the rationale behind most mix CDs, which typically reflect the musical tastes of a single compiler. While the editors of such compilations do exercise a certain amount of discretion over song order and selection, the term mix tape or mix CD is generally restricted to a compilation where the identity of the compiler is clearly associated with the album itself. For example, Starbucks, the coffee chain, sells a compilation CD series called Artist's Choice, which consists of mixes based on selections by such artists as Johnny Cash, Tony Bennett, and Sheryl Crow. Similarly, the Apple iTunes store features Celebrity Playlists, downloadable mix tapes in MP3-compatible form, selected by such artists as Moby, Barry Manilow, and Andrew W. K.

The presence of a readily identifiable compiler whose tastes are reflected in song selection and arrangement allow retail mix CDs to be distinguished from other types of compilations. The distinction can be rather subtle. For example, while most "greatest hits" compilations of individual recording artists consist of a collection of singles in chronological order, others include album tracks, new songs, or obscure selections in addition to established hits, and sometimes reorder the songs for optimal listening. As such, these compilations can be seen as "artist-specific" mixes selected and arranged by the artists themselves. (One recent example, among many, is R.E.M.’s In Time, the song selections and track listing of which inspired a certain amount of heated discussion within R.E.M.’s online fan base.)

One could also argue that the modern movie soundtrack, which often consists of selected pop music tracks (rather than the traditional orchestral score) is a mix tape with songs selected by the film's director or music supervisor. Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets is often cited as one of the first movie soundtracks to consist entirely of existing pop songs. Other movies with landmark compilation soundtracks include American Graffiti, Singles, and Pulp Fiction. A film's compilation soundtrack can sometimes surpass the movie itself in popularity: one notable example is the multiplatinum-selling country soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?

 

Legal issues

One important distinction between homemade mixes and retail compilations of pop music is that the latter generally obtain permissions for the use of copyrighted songs, while the former do not. As a result, mix tapes such as those produced and sold by club DJs in the 1970s are illegal (although rarely, if ever, prosecuted) under the definition of fair use expressed in the Copyright Act of 1976. Most mix tape enthusiasts assume that private mix tapes are inoffensive from a fair use standpoint, but this is far from clear. A 30 January 2003 article in the New York Times cites Frank Creighton, a director of antipiracy efforts for the Recording Industry Association of America, as saying that "money did not have to be involved for copying to be illegal. While mixes on cassette tapes may not have inspired the wrath of the record industry in the past, Mr. Creighton said, digital mixes have better sound quality. And given the proliferation of CD burning for friends and relatives, 'it would be naïve of us to say that we should allow that type of activity,' he said." Others have argued that the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 protects the noncommercial use of home recording devices. (In general, it seems reasonable to conclude that individuals creating mix tapes for private use or one-off gifts are unlikely to be prosecuted under existing piracy laws.)

 

Aesthetics

While the process of recording a mix onto an audio cassette from LPs or compact discs is technically straightforward, many music fans who create more than one mix tape are eventually compelled to confront some of the practical and aesthetic challenges involved in the mix tape format. From a practical standpoint, such issues as avoiding an excessive amount of blank tape at the end of one side (which requires careful planning of the length of each side of the mix) and reducing the audible click between songs (which requires mastery of the pause button on the cassette recorder) have been identified as part of the shared experience of mix tape aficionados. From an aesthetic point of view, many enthusiasts believe that because a tape player, unlike a CD player, lacks the ability to skip from song to song, the mix tape needs to be considered in its entirety. This requires the mix tape creator to consider the transitions between songs, the effects caused by juxtaposing a soft song with a loud song, and the overall "narrative arc" of the entire tape. One notable listing of such aesthetic "rules" can be found in a paragraph 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.

The film version of High Fidelity concludes with a similar monologue.

Many enthusiasts also devote substantial attention to the packaging of a mix tape intended as a gift, sometimes going so far as to create cover art and customized liner notes. The cover of the original McSweeney's edition of Songbook, a 2003 essay collection by Nick Hornby, was intended to suggest the packaging of a homemade mix CD. (It also came with an actual CD featuring ten of the songs discussed in the text.)

From an artistic point of view, many creators of mix tapes seem to regard them as a form of emotional self-expression, although whether a mix tape retains the same web of emotional associations when passed from its creator to the recipient is, at best, debatable. Some argue that in selecting, juxtaposing, or even editing originally unrelated tracks of pop music into a new work of art, the "author" of a mix tape moves from passive listener to archivist, editor, and finally active participant in the process of musical creation. (Some legitimacy for this viewpoint was provided by Cassette Stories, a 2003 exhibition at the Museum of Communication in Hamburg, Germany, which featured stories and submissions from eighty mix tape enthusiasts.) However, this perception of the mix tape as a work of art has been criticized as resulting in a sort of elitism, with creators becoming more concerned with finding arcane and surprising combinations of tracks than with creating a tape that is listenable, enjoyable, or appropriate to its intended recipient. (In High Fidelity, for example, the narrator's girlfriend complains that his mix tapes are too didactic.) On a very basic level, the creation of a mix tape can be seen as an expression of the individual compiler's taste in music, often put forward for the implicit approval of the tape's recipient, and in many cases as a tentative step towards building the compiler's personal canon of pop music.

 

Types of mix tapes

Although a "comprehensive" list of the different genres or categories of mix tapes could be extended indefinitely, and probably to no useful end, creating a taxonomy of mix tapes is a project that many mix tape enthusiasts have intuitively attempted. The different types of mix tapes identified on such community sites as Art of the Mix (http://www.artofthemix.org/) (which lists over two hundred genres, sometimes tongue-in-cheek) suggest the variety of potential categories. Beyond such basic genres as the simple taping of an entire album, the collection of favorite songs, and the "snapshot" mix of recent favorites, some of the more commonly cited categories (most of which are self-explanatory) include:

• The Romantic Mix
• The Break-Up Mix
• The Driving Mix
• The Workout Mix
• The Party Mix
• The Didactic Mix, intended to educate the recipient as to the essential works of a particular artist or genre.
• The Concept Mix or Theme Mix, such as a mix of Christmas songs, songs about cars, or covers of songs by a particular artist.
• The Mood Mix, simply a mix of songs intended to sustain a specific mood, stated or unstated.

 

Media references to mix tapes

Since the publication of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, the frequency of literary and pop cultural references to mix tapes has increased considerably, although Hornby was far from the first author to mention the phenomenon. Some of the earliest references to mix tapes can be found in Less Than Zero, the 1986 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. For example: "We get into Blair's car and she puts in a tape that she made the other night and Bananarama starts to sing and Trent asks her where the Beach-Mix tape is and Blaire tells him that she burned it because she heard it too many times." The novel Morvern Callar by Alan Warner, which was published shortly before High Fidelity, includes track listings for three mix tapes made by the book's main character.

However, extended critical or journalistic treatments of mix tape culture have only begun to appear over the past several years, possibly as a nostalgic response to the decline of the audio cassette itself as a medium for homemade mixes. Take the Cannoli, a 2001 book by Salon.com columnist Sarah Vowell, includes an essay entitled "Thanks for the Memorex," an account of a "long distance love affair by cassette tape" with an extended treatment of mix tape culture. More recently, Sonata for Jukebox, a 2004 essay collection by Geoffrey O'Brien, is structured as a mix tape, with each essay introduced by a song "cue" intended to set the tone for the piece to follow. It also includes thoughts on what the author calls "the most widely practiced American art form: the personal mix tape of favorite songs that serves as self-portrait, gesture of friendship, prescription for an ideal party, or simply as an environment consisting solely of what is most ardently loved." Finally, Mix Tape, the first book entirely devoted to the phenomenon, is scheduled to be published in December 2004. Written by Thurston Moore (a founding member of the rock band Sonic Youth), the book will include personal stories and reminiscences from over eighty mix tape enthusiasts.

Not surprisingly, quite a few references to mix tapes have been made by recording artists themselves. For example:

• Let it Burn, an album by punk group The Ataris, includes a track entitled "Song for a Mix Tape." Lyrics include: "Today I made you a mix tape / To say exactly how I feel inside / And make you feel it too."
• From the Ben Folds Five song "Kate": "When all words fail she speaks / her mix tape's a masterpiece."
• From the Beastie Boys song "Professor Bootie": "Life ain't nothing but a good groove / A good mix tape to put you in the right mood."
• From the Beastie Boys song "Flute Loop": "I feel like a winner when I make a mix tape because I get ill when I'm on the pause button / and I get my fill and you can't say nothing."
• From the Semisonic song "Singing in My Sleep": "Got your tape and it changed my mind... / I've been living in your cassette... / Now I'm falling in love too fast / With you or the songs you chose / I can hear you sing it to me in my sleep."
• From the Björk song "My Headphones": "I fell asleep listening to your tape last night."
• From the Better Than Ezra song "Rewind": "Cut a tape of my favorite songs / Said what I can't face to face... / Now there is nothing but a mix tape left behind / Now it won't rewind."
• From the Brand New song "Mix Tape": "This is the first song for your mix tape / And it’s short just like your temper."
• The musical Avenue Q features a song called "Mix Tape." Lyrics include: "A mix tape / He made a mix tape / He was thinking of me, which shows he cares / Sometimes when someone has a crush on you / They'll make you a mix tape to give you a clue."

A number of other references to mix tapes in popular culture include:

• From the original screenplay of Boogie Nights, by Paul Thomas Anderson: "I put a mix tape together of all my favorite songs...This is song number three...I love putting mix tapes together, you know...if you buy an album of a tape or something, those guys put songs in their order and they try and say how you should listen to the songs, but I don't like that. I don't like to be told what to listen to, when to listen to or anything..." (Spoken by Rahad Jackson, played by Alfred Molina.)
• In a deleted scene from the move Say Anything, Lloyd Dobler (played by John Cusack, who would later star in High Fidelity) presents Diane (played by Ione Skye) with a "cool English road tape." (Director Cameron Crowe claims to have rediscovered the Peter Gabriel song "In Your Eyes," which figures memorably in the movie, while compiling a mix tape for his own wedding.)
• The Blair Witch Project has a companion album intended to represent a mix tape found in the car of one of the main characters.
• An episode of the television series Friends entitled "The One With The Unagi (aka The One With the Mix Tape)" features a mix tape given by Chandler to Monica for Valentine's Day. This mix tape had been given to Chandler by his ex-girlfriend Janice, a fact which Monica discovers when we hear Janice's voice on the tape. This was episode 17 of season 6.

 

Mix tapes in global culture

All of the references to mix tapes cited above come from media sources in the United States, the United Kingdom, or continental Europe. The use of mix tapes in other countries is less documented. However, it seems reasonable to believe that mixes exist wherever access to popular music is combined with a convenient means of recording homemade compilations (although mix tapes may not have been a significant element of the youth culture in such countries). For example, Sarah Erdman's 2003 book Nine Hills to Nambonkaha includes a description of the tape collection of a middle-class African in the Ivory Coast:

I click through his box of tapes, finding African musicians I've never heard of, old Phil Collins, Rod Stewart with a long earring before his "Some Guys Have All the Luck" days. But I also discover Van Morrison, a Rolling Stones bootleg, Peter Tosh, Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Tracy Chapman, Sting. His mixed tapes flit from Donna Summer to Joe Cocker to Bonnie Raitt.

One should also note that in Africa, India, and parts of the Middle East, audio cassettes currently remain the most popular medium for prerecorded music. This suggests that the compact audio cassette may still be the preferred medium for mixes in at least some parts of the world.