Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

Today’s SF Chronicle has a good story on the demise of the old “Mix Tape”. Those lovingly put together mixes that some of us spent hours listening, recording, listening and recording until the perfect mix was made. As the article points out it was the time, effort and less than perfect technology that helped make these pieces of audio compilation unique and special. Back in the analog days you had to listen to a song as you cued it up and then as it recorded and as we all know, now you can create a play list and burn it without ever really listening or putting much energy into it. Further, back in the “Mix Tape” days most of us used records as our source and like the lines in a person’s face, the clicks, scratches and physical sound of each record is different. Therefore, each tape we made was original and special. Now with digital sound and technology the “mix tape” has become a much more generic offering that doesn’t come with as much character and feeling that those chunks of plastic and magnetic ribbon possessed. Sure, it’s always nice to have someone share some new music with you but the old mix tape was a unique piece that had much more than just the compilation of songs recorded onto it. RIP “The Mix Cassette Tape.”