Online Mixtapes For Friends & Awkward Crushes

March 25, 2008 3:34 PM

Have a crush on someone you only know online? Want to make them a mixtape but you don't have their physical address? Not a problem, thanks to Muxtape, an online mixtape manager. Just upload up to 12 tracks, and a custom URL is provided.Via.
posted by jonson (55 comments total)

I foresee incredible applications of this tool in the emerging science of online creepiness.
posted by lore at 3:38 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You are so getting a muxtape from me, jonson. Keep your eyes peeled.
posted by Dave Faris at 3:41 PM on March 25, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

**FINGERS CROSSED FOR PLENTY OF MANILOW**
posted by jonson at 3:48 PM on March 25, 2008

do you like phil collins?
posted by AaRdVarK at 3:49 PM on March 25, 2008

su-su-sussudio!
posted by CitizenD at 3:56 PM on March 25, 2008

"Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use. Individual users may not create multiple muxtapes."

So I can only stalk one person at a time?

I can't have 2 Cure songs at once?

sux.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 4:00 PM on March 25, 2008

Of course you can't put two Cure songs on the same mixtape. Don't you have any goddamned rules at all?
posted by klangklangston at 4:03 PM on March 25, 2008 [12 favorites has favorites]

up to 12 songs? what kind of crap is that? everyone knows a good mix has at least 20 songs.

thank you for bringing this worthless crap to my attention, jonson.
posted by Hat Maui at 4:04 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

How does Muxtape determine if you have permission to use a song? And (says the cynical side of me) are they linked to a music store for some kind of kickback?

I like this idea anyway, all you nay-sayers. I never got a Mefi mixtape, so I look forward to spamming you all with Celine Dion.
posted by misha at 4:06 PM on March 25, 2008

Well - it prompted me to go and have another look at Tinymixtapes where I can feast myself on songs to speed up and slow down my perception of time for example.
posted by rongorongo at 4:12 PM on March 25, 2008

I can't have 2 Cure songs at once?

C'mon. What kind of message would "Why Can't I Be You" and "Lullaby" on the same mix tape be sending anyway?
posted by katillathehun at 4:32 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

metafilter: the emerging science of online creepiness

(my first one-of-those)
posted by stubby phillips at 4:37 PM on March 25, 2008

Hunh. Neat! I wish you could have more than 12 songs, but I've honestly been waiting for exactly this sort of online application.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:38 PM on March 25, 2008

How does Muxtape determine if you have permission to use a song?

They don't. This is how they get people to use their product and , in theory, stay legally protected for copyright infringement on the part of their users. All sites like this really need to do is take stuff down when notified and have the outward appearance of being on the up-and-up.

For a perfect example of this, check out the YouTube homepage and note how you never see ripped off TV content there.
posted by dhammond at 4:52 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks jonson, promising find.

Hey, klangklangston I agree with the premise of your one-song-per-artist rule, but...

I received a few mixtapes from a fantastic girl with all sorts of fantastic stuff on them. At first I was totally put off by the fact that she would include multiple songs by the same artist (and the same album, one right after the other), but there was a certain charm to it - like a short musical detour.

One of her best tapes had a Funki Porcini track on it twice in a row, once at 33 and then again at 45.
posted by eric1halfb at 4:54 PM on March 25, 2008

You're totally allowed to do 2 tracks by an artist on a mix tape, but only if:

i) it's only done once, and the tracks are the first on side A and last on side B (the full circle); or
ii) it's only done once, at the end of side A and beginning of side B (the transition); or
iii) it's done for every single artist on the tape (double hitters)
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:00 PM on March 25, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

No, no, no, I was just pickin' on The Light Fantastic. I'm a firm believer that people should be told that there are iron-clad rules for mixtapes, and then realize later on that there really aren't. I find rules like Durn Bronzefist's more gimmicky than worthwhile, generally.
posted by klangklangston at 5:08 PM on March 25, 2008

Guys, I have something to confess... I have a crush on all of you, and these are the songs I listen to when pleasuring myself during fantasies about you.
posted by jonson at 5:19 PM on March 25, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Meh. I like the original rule but you know sometimes you just can't decide between two tracks so it's time to roll out a new wrinkle to the rule.

Have done the double-hitter tapes, though, and find it can hit a nice groove.

One thing, more seriously, I would in fact do is almost obsessively order the songs so that the end of one would suggest the start of the next. It's all about the flow.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 5:20 PM on March 25, 2008

Looks like a cute way of building an MP3 collection.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:24 PM on March 25, 2008

Funny, I just saw another site like this a couple days ago. I wonder which one wins you more hipster points.
posted by p3t3 at 6:05 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Though come to think of it, this was junior high, so I was probably into gimmicky, too.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:08 PM on March 25, 2008

"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." Nick Hornby - from Hi Fidelity and as quoted on the Wikipedia mix tape page. Anyway - these are his 31 songs.
posted by rongorongo at 6:08 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Mix tapes? Why don't we just whip out the freakin' Members Only jackets and OP shirts.
posted by Justinian at 6:14 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Takes a while to upload each one, and it's hard to narrow it down to what 12 songs to inflict on share with all of you. I'm working on it, though.
posted by yhbc at 6:28 PM on March 25, 2008

Man, at this rate, these comments qualify this thread as a mixsnark. Such audacity! Such wit and sensibility!

I love you too, but it may come as a surprise and disappointment that I am unavailable. Thanks all the same! LOVE the mix!
posted by mwhybark at 6:29 PM on March 25, 2008

One of her best tapes had a Funki Porcini track on it twice in a row, once at 33 and then again at 45.
posted by eric1halfb at 7:54 PM on March 25

That implies she has a turntable. Not to sound like a fossil, but do a lot of younger people own turntables? Is it a common/trendy thing?
posted by Pastabagel at 6:40 PM on March 25, 2008

Not to sound like a fossil, but do a lot of younger people own turntables?

What's a turntable?


...


Ok, I kid. My parents had one.
posted by Justinian at 6:53 PM on March 25, 2008

done
posted by yhbc at 6:58 PM on March 25, 2008

That implies she has a turntable. Not to sound like a fossil, but do a lot of younger people own turntables? Is it a common/trendy thing?

Hipsters and punk fans, mostly.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:59 PM on March 25, 2008

Pastabagel, you're joking, right?

Wait... that was my initial reaction, but then this was over ten years ago, well before the reign of the iPod and MP3. I'd like to think that kids still have turntables, but I'm honestly not too sure.
posted by eric1halfb at 7:00 PM on March 25, 2008

do a lot of younger people own turntables? Is it a common/trendy thing?

Fans of dance/club music often have turntables. Urban dwellers who like to throw great parties will too. They also typically own two of them. (and a mixer, and big speakers, etc.) or this

For a mixtape, though, you'd probably just use an MP3 player that can do pitch shifting, or mulitrack recording software.

On preview: punk fans use turntables?
posted by b1tr0t at 7:00 PM on March 25, 2008

I made one.

Also, regarding the turntable question, the answer is sort of yes and no. Most people obviously don't, but among younger music aficionados and hipsters (same thing?) they have seen a rise in popularity in the past few years. I admit to owning one, and yes, just one, because I like buying records instead of CDs. There are a bunch of reasons:

1. Music is more fun when it's more interactive, even if all you're doing is flipping sides every 20 minutes.


2. Vinyl is more "worth it", in terms of money spent. For roughly the same price as a CD, you get what is essentially a small poster sized version of the album art. I put them on my walls and it's like having each 12" blocks of my wall be curated by my favorite artists. Sometimes you also get free extras (Spoon album came with a free MP3 download, Postal Service album came with a huge poster).


3. The "sweeter" sound of vinyl is also quite nice.


4. I get to play all my parents' old, awesome records. Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall"? Hell yes.
Chicks totally dig it.

So yeah, hope that answers your question.
posted by patr1ck at 7:36 PM on March 25, 2008

Source on my claim that vinyl is coming back.

and yeah chicks dig it was suppose to be #5, dunno what happened there.
posted by patr1ck at 7:41 PM on March 25, 2008

Oooh! Basketball Jones!

Now make me one with "Stacy Brown's Got Two" from Shel Silverstein, please! I will favorite you umpty kajillion times.
posted by misha at 7:44 PM on March 25, 2008

On preview: punk fans use turntables?

A lot of punk bands think putting out records is cool.

(they are mostly crappy bands)
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:06 PM on March 25, 2008

Not sure how interested anyone would be, but I put up a mix of songs I would like my band to cover, for other members. It's not exactly reflective of my own personal tastes (I mean, I like all the songs, but they're not my favorites), but rather what I like that I think they'd like. Don't judge.
posted by 235w103 at 8:41 PM on March 25, 2008

In the U.S., figures as high as 22 per cent are being floated about the growth in vinyl record sales.

Shellac must have added a second guitarist this year.

Cool. Now if only they could find a way to get that rich, warm LP sound on an MP3-related format, we might be back to the glory days of albums when it was more exciting than a search and click to hear new music.

That's easy. Run the mp3 through a vinyl emulating VST plugin. Then you'll get crackle, noise, and warm hiss to your hearts content. For extra realism strip a bit of audio data from the mp3 every time you play it.
posted by bunnytricks at 8:44 PM on March 25, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Also a lot of older punk stuff was only available on vinyl, plus vinyl had a certain cachet of "authenticity" in some circles. Steve Albini has a whole anti-CD rant in the liner notes for The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape which is kind of funny but I can't seem to find online anywhere.
posted by whir at 9:09 PM on March 25, 2008

This is sorta neat. BUT WHY IS THE TEXT SO HUGE???
posted by loiseau at 9:11 PM on March 25, 2008

I was just thinking the other day that while vinyl is still thought of fondly by many today, just about the only thing that anyone really liked about cassette tapes as a music technology was the mixtape, and that whole art of getting the right songs to fit precisely on one side of a tape, syncing up the songs one after another, avoiding clicks, etc. Uploading 12 mp3's to a site, or alternatively dragging 19 of them onto a Nero window and rearranging them, just doesn't have the same obsessive quality.
posted by whir at 9:17 PM on March 25, 2008

I loved cassettes. Unlike CDs they didn't require meticulous care in treatment. I still have tapes from my childhood that are listenable, while every CD I've ever bought is a scratched and scraped hellzone that no laser can track.
posted by bunnytricks at 9:40 PM on March 25, 2008

Steve Albini vs. The People.

My mix: Girls vs. Boys.
posted by bunnytricks at 9:50 PM on March 25, 2008

Tapes may be a little more durable than CD's, but tape players never seemed to be. Maybe I was just always buying cheap ones, but they all eventually seemed to either slow down and gradually warp my tapes or else start to produce a grinding sound that was way louder than the music. Plus they had the "tape stuck in my car stereo" problem, which in retrospect is good for stories but was mostly really irritating when it happened.

Also, nice one on that Team Dresch track, and when is that Albini talk from? Here he is a few months back on (MeFi's own) The Sound of Young America, covering some of the same territory.
posted by whir at 10:26 PM on March 25, 2008

I don't remember where I first ran across the MTSU Albini talk, but it's from a few years back and has likely been posted here somewhere. I found a link to it on electrical audio by googling "analog digital albini rant," trying to find the liner notes.

Searching again for "the future belongs to analog loyalists" finds the liner notes in question and this slice of awesome.
posted by bunnytricks at 11:22 PM on March 25, 2008

Is this how people are courting now days? Must be the result of all those MySpace/Facebook type sites.

Seems strange. On the other hand, I love all your mixtapes and now I want to go on dates with all of you!
posted by eye of newt at 11:59 PM on March 25, 2008

take this you bastards
posted by sgt.serenity at 1:33 AM on March 26, 2008

Pastabagel, you're joking, right?

Wait... that was my initial reaction, but then this was over ten years ago, well before the reign of the iPod and MP3. I'd like to think that kids still have turntables, but I'm honestly not too sure.
posted by eric1halfb at 10:00 PM on March 25

Nope, not kidding. I knew absolutely no one in the 80's who owned a record player. Their parents did, but they never used it. Everyone bought tapes, and when CD's became popular, we all dubbed each others CD onto tape. The only time I ever used my parents record player was to play their classical records from the 50's and 60s. In the early 90's record players were a joke - why would you buy an album that was digitally recorded and mastered and then play it on crappy hissy vinyl?

Of course, DJ and early rap guys had them, but they viewed more as instruments, like keyboards, than strictly as a playback device.

This discussion has certainly opened my eyes about how people want to physically interact with their music, i.e. putting a record on the turntable is almost like a sacred ritual you reserved for your favorite music.

I look forward to the day when the kids eschew the high speed internet as a way of passing data, and choose to interact with their software using vintage 5 1/4" floppy disks.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:50 AM on March 26, 2008

Uploading 12 mp3's to a site, or alternatively dragging 19 of them onto a Nero window and rearranging them, just doesn't have the same obsessive quality.

Well, as somebody that obsessively drags tracks around in Cool Edit Pro (old, but it meets my needs without highfalutin' geegaws and doodads) to make the beginnings of songs overlap in weird and synchronous ways, I can say that there IS an art to the digital mix, and it requires an ear for not just the overall flow of the mix, but also putting songs in a sequence where beginnings and ends can collide artfully.
posted by Shepherd at 10:54 AM on March 26, 2008

I found this tool for showing a given lastfm user's last 10 loved tracks as an RSS feed. The creepy trick here would be to use this to send the object of your crush a mix tape comprised of tracks that they loved but where unaware that you could know that they loved.
posted by rongorongo at 8:47 AM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The best possible muxtape.
posted by sparkletone at 1:41 PM on March 29, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Heard about this elsewhere twice before I wound up in here, so I already have one up and sorry but can't offer any snark with it. One can get a good idea of what to expect before listening by referencing sparkletone's link.
posted by carsonb at 5:15 PM on April 1, 2008

Mine is up, but I'm still futzing with it, so go listen, then expect the songs to change.

Also, the 10mb limit isn't hard—it didn't even blink at a 28mb song, and it plays the whole thing.
posted by klangklangston at 6:39 PM on April 1, 2008

ok
posted by muckster at 8:37 PM on April 2, 2008

Anyway - these are his 31 songs.

I bought that book, and it's one of the more pointless things without having the CD to go with it.
posted by smackfu at 9:27 PM on April 14, 2008