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Dec.7
2009

Stop. Hey. What's That Sound?

My wife and I were having a discussion last night about the Eno/Branca thing (that we talked about in the comments of this post,) and she brought up an interesting point. She said the way to combat the pervasiveness of microtaste in the past was mixtapes. You made a tape for your prospective significant other, or your friend, or whatever, and that tape was a good indication of the fundamental nature of You.

Now, the person you gave it to might not like every song, but since they were theoretically compatible with you in some way, they'd like most of them, and in the process of liking most of them, you'd turn them on to something new, perhaps. But then there would be a demonstrable collection of two people that liked the same group of songs, which makes a microtaste (which is inherently singular in nature) in to a macrotaste, and a movement is born.

Anyhow, Elle was postulating that it would be interesting to have a scenario wherein you created a mixtape of some sort, sent it in some fashion to a central clearing house, and got one in return. Being older, we were dwelling on the concept of sending in a CD-R and getting one in return, as the transient nature of the internet doesn't lend itself to this sort of thing, in our opinion. Anyhow, you'd make a CD-R full of the songs that described you, and sent it off, and a couple weeks later, from some other utterly random person, you'd get a completely unrelated CD-R, full of songs that described them. In this fashion, you could get out of your normal self-created shell that the current state of the music industry creates.

This Global Mixtape is just the meme of an idea, and if there's a service or something already existing that does this sort of thing, I'd love to hear about it. Obviously, just doing it as the idea stands now is impossible. There would be massive costs associated with the disparity in postage rates alone, never mind the time associated with actually physically doing the swap. However, I'd love to flesh this idea out in to something that could actually occur, so if anyone has any thoughts on the subject, lay 'em out.

Comments:

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What about services like blip.fm and songza, which let you search for tracks and put together playlists? Blip.fm goes a bit further and lets you subscribe to a user's stream, if you like their taste.

posted December 7, 2009 by nasir

The thought occurs that it might work as a sort of "secret Santa" thing (the bane of all office existence... that, and co-workers with children selling something for fundraising). A bunch of interested parties submit their address for mailing to the central org, which randomly matches addresses with interested parties... so that you get one address of one person to send your CD-R to, and some one person out there has your address to send their CD-R...

Except that this would be very random and still leave you in small clutches of two. Great, so you met one other person in the world who also likes music: big deal.

The benefit of a service exchanging actual media versus a playlist trading site is that the person on the receiving end of the playlist would also have the actual song to listen to, rather than just a bunch of pointers to names they have to then hunt down for themselves (although musical scavenger hunts can be fun).

Brief aside, I found several great acts I had never heard of but love to bits now because Tom at the Waveformless blog did an end-of-2008 highlights from his point of view, linked to YouTube videos and iTunes (and at this point I profess that I have never bought a digital download, still relying on the stone age technology of the Compact Disc [Steve Albini called it "the rich mans eight-track tape"]... 1500 and counting... I am that thing the record companies love, a sucker with money). Which isn't entirely the same idea, and entails the whole transient nature of the internet, but falls somewhere in the same vat of thought.

And then there are the days when you suddenly realize that something you typed seven months ago was a really, really stupid thing to say, but you can't take it back now...

posted December 7, 2009 by Mad Al

these guys have been doing something like this for a while. link [internationalmixtapeproject.com]

you send a cd directly to another person in the world, and receive one directly from someone else, every month.

posted December 7, 2009 by goik

Well, there we go, then. That's exactly it.

-CR

posted December 7, 2009 by Chris Randall

Historically, macrotaste is the aberration, something that only really exists with the development of mass media. I think mixtapes are/were vehicles of microtaste. Any successful experience I had with mixtapes all those years ago was really only with the like-minded, so while the recipients hadn't necessarily heard of the things I stuck on a tape, they were at least open to the general styles present. It was a good way of creating a pocket of followers, but it still paled in comparison to the reach of major label stuff that was on TV/radio all the time.

posted December 7, 2009 by shamann

My first thought is that the RIAA would smack you down and squish you like a bug. Getting around the obvious fact that you are, in fact, copying music and giving it away would be the number one hurdle that would be in your way.

posted December 7, 2009 by noisetheorem

for a more on line experience try

link [www.pandora.com]

a *little* like what you describe, you tell it what you like and it suggests an endless lsit of stuff you might not have heard, I used to listen 'till they stopped working with people outside the USA...

posted December 7, 2009 by Lindon

there were 2 groups in Chicago that tried to get something like this going a few years back. One was called (I think) Elevated Exchange. The idea was that people put a patch or sticker on something that they frequently carried with them (jacket, backpack, notebook). If you had one of these on you it indicated that you were a member and thus were carrying a mixtape or CDR and would exchange it with other members if asked. I heard about this once or twice but think it kind of fell apart. I think the idea while kind of cool has some obvious flaws and would never really work in Chicago... might have worked better in a different city though. I can't remember the name of the other program, I think was a multi-city affair though. The deal was that you printed stickers or stencils of a cassette tape from the group's website which you then stuck or tagged in random spots around your city to indicate that you had left a mixtape somewhere in the general vicinity. People in the know were then expected to find and take these tapes/CDs and leave one of their own in return. I really liked the idea and even found a few of the sprayed tags in Chicago but never any media... seemed people were taking more than exchanging. To be expected I guess.

posted December 7, 2009 by mark

I've never made or received a mixtape so perhaps this is a naive question but why is a mixtape / personal playlist better than something like Pandora that will suggest music from other users based on what you rate as liking (assuming it works reasonably well- I've never tried it myself)? Does the personal connection add something to the experience, esp. if you don't know the other person and are just mailing a CD-R to a "random" address?

Personally I've found the "free" CDs that come in Mixmag magazine as a great way to learn about new electronic stuff if you're into the genres they deal in (house, techno, etc.). It's a DJ mix by a different DJ each month so not quite the same as a mixtape but I've found lots of music I like through that. Plus their cover models have gotten less trashy and their articles have been getting more substance over the last two years or so, so I actually read some of the articles now instead of just extracting the CD and trashing the mag on the way back from the mailbox.

posted December 7, 2009 by fussylizard

I dunno, getting a mixtape from a friend is altogether different than getting a mixtape from a random person. I really despise most people's taste in music, so I would really not be thrilled to get a mixtape from some average jerkface who thinks Nickelback is there greatest thing in the world. 9 times out of 10 it would probably turn out that we shared absolutely no overlap in personality or tastes whatsoever, and I think it would be a rather inefficient way to discover new music that I might like.

I've never been much of a mixtape maker or reciever, but this discussion does remind me of a similar way way I used to discover a lot of music. That is: hanging out and smoking pot for hours at a time at friends' houses while listening to their music collections. Since being an adult isn't really conducive of this behavior, I just realized that I'm missing out on something that used to be a major conduit of music into my life, not to mention, a very enjoyable experience too. Sometimes it sucks being an "adult" with responsibilities... sigh.

As for modern alternatives, Napster, of all things, in its heyday had some great social features that made it really easy and enjoyable to explore other people's music collections with similar tastes. I found a lot of great music that way, but unfortunately I haven't found anything quite like it since. I'm sure there are other services out there now, but I doubt there are any that wrap up the whole discovery/acquisition process into such a nice neat little package with such a huge user base. If there is, I want to know.

posted December 7, 2009 by afreshcupofjoe

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