I like music.

I like listening to my favorite music, sharing my music with others, and discovering new music.

Remember mixtapes? How many do you thikn you made over the years? I’m sure a few people made “mix 8-tracks” and I know my dad made a few “mix reel-to-reel” projects, but cassette tape mixes were a cultural phenomenon that forever changed the way we interact with music. The world has since moved on to CDs and MP3s, but the mixtape – and the artistry involved in the creation of one of these works of art – will always have a special place in my heart. Nick Hornby’s geeky and emotional obsession with the “rules” for creating a quality mixtape ring very true for me:

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.

I remember working for hours – sometimes days – making mixes for girlfriends in high school and college. There were so many subtleties involved in making the perfect mixtape and I enjoyed paying attention to every single one of them. I think the Aesthetics section of the Wikipedia entry on mixtapes touches on anything I could possible mention here (check it out!). It was hard work, always remaining both a science and an art, but the finished product was something to be proud of. And the creation process probably offered some sneaky self-reflection time, too.

Nowadays, music is too easy to come by. I can download every single major album that was released last year in just a few hours. The discovery of new music has lost some of its magic for me. People may create MP3 playlists for jogging or driving but I don’t see too many people putting the thought or love into these that we once did with mixtapes. It’s too easy. Hell, we just drag-and-drop a hundred quickly selected tracks onto our players, hit random, and go! The exception to this rule, of course, is my dad who continues to whip out a few mixes every year. I hope the digital age and newfound ease haven’t watered down the end result.

I started thinking about mixtapes again when my cousin Marli recently asked her “social network” for music compilation donations for a road trip she was planning. It made me think how I hadn’t made or received a quality mix in years (not since Jeremy’s world wide mixtape project of 2003). Whenever I listen to music nowadays I just select my entire MP3 music library and set it to random. Every once in a while I’ll make a playlist that’s filtered by genre or I’ll listen to a single album in it’s entirety, but these don’t happen all that often.

Anyone wanting to listen to music via their computer has a bevy of options from which to choose. You’ve got Last.fm, internet radio stations, Live365, Napster, SHOUTcast, or SeeqPod (just to name a few!). But they all seem to lack that personal touch. There’s nobody behind these playlists giving their content and order any serious thought. And then I discovered Muxtape.

Muxtape, the online mixtape creation service, has been streaming free, user-generated playlists to the masses since its launch in late March. The idea is simple enough: Upload 12 MP3s and share your newly mixed (or is that muxed?) playlist with pals. A similar service exists at Mixwit, but I haven’t played with that one yet.

I don’t necessarily think that Muxtape is the end-all answer to my nostalgic longings (there was no need to add up the running time of each side of the tape to minimize the empty space at the end), but I did enjoy the hour or two it took me to plan and create my mix. I played around with the idea of a “nostalgic classic rock with a message theme”, but in the end I opted for the “modern energetic indie make-you-smile infusion” theme:
joshzam.muxtape.com

1. Ani DiFranco – Little Plastic Castle
2. Cake – Sheep Go To Heaven
3. Kaiser Chiefs – Everyday I Love You Less And Less
4. Klaxons – Golden Skans
5. Hot Chip – Over And Over
6. Fatboy Slim – Wonderful Night
7. Beastie Boys – Body Movin’
8. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Ghost Of Stephen Foster
9. William Shatner – I Can’t Get Behind That
10. TMBG – Nightgown Of The Sullen Moon
11. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Better Dean than Lead
12. LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum

I’m happy with this mix even though I recognize that it lacks soul as a result of the fact that it was made with no single person in mind. If anyone wants to play around with this site and try their hand at their own mix (when was the last time?) please leave the link to your creation in the comments. I’d love to hear what you’ve got to share!