Mixtapes In The Streaming Age

As the world moved from physical media to streaming, shared playlists have replaced mix CDs which themselves replaced the old-school mixtape. This has been a convenient transition for most folks, but I missed the ability to actually mix in new sounds rather than just sort some tracks.

Back in the late 1980's and again in the late 1990's I did shows on WRPI, and enjoyed having the capabilities of the full studio. At home, I had a simple mixing board to cross fade and inject short samples, then as digital became king, moved to an early DAW with Cool Edit Pro (which was later absorbed, Borg-style, to become Adobe Audition). I used these tools to add bits and pieces of "found sound" to spice up my mixes.

I'm happy to say that Mixcloud has emerged as the home for DJing in this new streaming era. You just upload a show with a set list (exactly the same sort of administrative stuff that you do for a radio show) and they make sure that the licensing and music rights orgs are all satisfied. With a paid subscription, they will let you live stream and use audio ID software to automatically generate the set list - Neat!

I've uploaded some of my past mixes below. Now that I have a way to share them again, I'll start going through the tons of music that I've picked up since COVID and look for some inspiration!

• Music For Building Starships - Prime Universe
• Music For Building Starships - Mirror Universe
• Music Dave Might Like - Vol. 1: On The Job!
• Music Dave Might Like - Vol. 2: After Hours (Explicit Lyrics!)
• Music Ron Might Like

As an aside, the "Music that ..." name pattern is a callback to a mixtape made by my earliest friend, the Dave of "Music Dave Might Like." It was cleverly called "Music Your Father Wouldn't Care For," which was accurate from a generational perspective, but also applied to my specific father!

Now all we are missing is a solution for cover art - We've gone from 12 inch square masterpieces suitable for framing down to 500px thumbnails!

134: Orcas, Dave

133: Bubbles II, Dave

132: Hibiscus, Emma

131: Shark Week, Emma