Variety Tapes

WNYC New York Soundcheck does a show about the lost art of the mixtape.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/4256/cassette-tape-closet-by-patrick-schuur.html

A new movie is about making mixtapes! 

And it doesn’t totally stink.  Discussion anyone?

Check out the trailer here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NickAndNorahMovie

Great stuff on muxtape.com about their battle with the Recording Industry. Must read for mixtape fans.

http://muxtape.com/

NPR All Songs Considered did a nice story about Apple’s New iTunes 8 ‘Genius’ feature. It sort of makes a mix tape for you on the fly that uses some Pandora-like AI to guide the making of the ‘mix’.  I’ve been playing with it for the last week or so and I have to say it’s quite good. It’s especially nice on the iPod for setting a mood. And the promise is that it will get ’smarter’ as more data is gathered from the cloud. Exciting stuff. Also, check out the mix-like offerings on this very fine site. Good stuff all around.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2008/09/itunes_genius.html

WNYC New York had a story about a classical artist inspired by mixtapes today. And this archived show from June of this year is a great story about the art of the mix.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2008/09/17/segments/109129

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2008/06/19/segments/100830

http://www.myspace.com/channelv

I look forward to playing around with this new ‘analog’ player.

Post your mixes here and let’s share!

Here’s a story about it in ADWEEK:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i68343da3c822c824d2dbbd74ed268c24

http://kotaku.com/357408/activision-trademarks-dj-hero

With the upcoming release of DJ Hero why not MixTape Hero? Put the right combinations of tunes together and unlock new genres of music to mix. Make the wrong moves (for example, pairing a Mozart opera with AC/DC) and hear a series of painful bleeps and missed notes.

My current turntable is made by Ion and uses a USB cable and Audacity to encode music. This new one goes one step further. Read on, vinyl heads. 

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/11/ions-lp-2-flash-records-lp-straight-to-flash/