Blank Tapes & CDs

A mixtape is a compilation of songs and or tracks (typically copyrighted music taken from other sources) recorded in a specific order, traditionally onto a compact audio cassette. more...

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The songs can be sequential; by the 1980s, seamless mixtapes made by beatmatching the songs and creating overlaps and fades between the end of one song and the beginning of another became more popular.

The most common early mixtapes were bootleg 8 track tapes that were sold at flea markets and truck stops in the late 60's through the early 80's, with names like "Super 73", "Country Chart Toppers" or "Top Pops 1977". The tapes with the year in the title usually were released before Christmas or early the following year, and were very big sellers.

With the advent of affordable, consumer-level digital audio, creating and distributing mixes in the form of a compact disc or MP3 playlist has become the contemporary method of choice, but the term mixtape is still commonly used, and will be used throughout this article to refer to mixes in different media (CD, MP3, MiniDisc, audio cassette 8 track, etc.).

A mixtape, which usually reflects the musical tastes of its 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 mixtape "the most widely practiced American art form," and many mixtape 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

Homemade mixtapes became common in the 1980's. Although the compact audio cassette by Philips appeared at the 1963 Berlin radio show, the sound quality of cassettes was not good enough to be seriously considered for music recording until further advances in tape formulations, including the advent of chrome and metal tape. 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 or 8 track recorder, 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 cassettes and a cassette recorder connected to a source of prerecorded music, such as a radio or LP player. The 8-track tape cartridge was more popular for music recording during much of the 1960's, as the cassette was originally only mono and intended for vocal recordings only, such as in office dictation machines. But improvements in fidelity finally allowed the cassette to become a major player. The ready availability of the cassette and higher quality home recording decks to serve the home casual user allowed the cassette to become the dominant tape format, to the point that the 8 track tape nearly disappeared shortly after the turn of the 1980's. The growth of the mixtape was also encouraged by improved quality and increased popularity of audio cassette players in car entertainment systems, and by the introduction of the Sony Walkman around 1979.

Read more at Wikipedia.org