Tapes & Tapes

Khoi

16 years ago

Very belatedly, I want to offer a requiem for the old Muxtape. In its current incarnation, it’s become a showcase for new bands that shows some real promise, hewing to the artful, minimalist aesthetic that in part made Muxtape famous. But in its original form, as imagined and launched by its creator Justin Oullette last year, it provided an elegantly efficient social space where anyone could upload their own mix of songs — of all the social networks we’ve seen so far, it was for my money the least fussy and the most elegant.

The old Muxtape was a perfect example of going to great — one might say drastic — lengths to minimize distractions, yielding a wonderfully designed experience for the user, and coming as close as anyone has to achieving a truly, thoroughly modernist online environment. Not incidentally, its somewhat brazen flouting of copyright laws allowed scores of would-be deejays to have fun programming their own playlists. It was really, really fun.

Remuxing the Past

I can attest to that because last June I made my own Muxtape and had enjoyed it. Unfortunately, when the record labels ultimately took issue with the service and forced it to cease its all-comers uploading policy, that track list disappeared along with the many, many others that had been posted to the site during its brief heyday.

In that original spirit, I’m posting a new mix using Muxtape’s would-be successor, Opentape — the track listing is below, and you can listen to the playlist itself at Mix.subtraction.com. In form, Opentape closely resembles its progenitor; its spare beauty is a nearly perfect replica of Muxtape’s. But since it resides on each user’s own Web server rather than existing as a centralized service, it lacks Muxtape’s social features, essentially dooming to a much more limited reach. Which also means it isn’t quite as fun. Still, you can listen to the music, which counts for something.

Listen to This Opentape Mix
No.	Artist	Song Name
01	The Haywards	“A Lot of People Fall in Love in the Key of C”
02	Army Navy	“My Thin Sides”
03	Suede	“Shipbuilding”
04	Crystal Stilts	“Crippled Croon”
05	The War on Drugs	“A Need in Your Eye #16”
06	Richard Swift	“The Bully”
07	Lou Rawls	“You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine”
08	Women	“Upstairs”
(Least search engine optimized band name ever.)
09	The Howling Hex	“What, Man? Who Are You?!”
10	The Twilight Sad	“Climbing up the Walls”
11	Michael Nesmith & The First National Band	“Hollywood”