About the word "mixtape"

Something that I am wondering… About the word mixtape.

It seems that those homemade compilations can be called mixtape in English, or at least, in America.

There is now a French mixtape Wikipedia article but it really looks anachronistic to me as I never heard this term used in the 80s when I made several compilations myself, as most people used to do then. I only discovered this word in the late 2010s, associated to hip-hop/rap.
I wonder why that Wikipedia page does not tell the reader that this Mixtape word was not used in French.

I was wondering what term was used in your countries?
France: compilation, compil’, or even simply, cassette (K7).

Is mixtape the correct word in English? Is it a neologism or was it really used in the 80s for homemade compilations?

2 Likes

In 1963, my first full time job out of high school was for a company that produced audio tape. The R & D dept made a lot of experimental “mixes”. They did not use the term “mixtape”. They were known as “in house recordings”. I don’t believe "Mixtape was ever a an official word in the industry. It just became accepted as unofficial jargon at a later time. I actually made my own with a reel to reel recorder. With a mic hooked up, I recorded some 45’s and AM radio tunes. It was a 12 pound “Walkman”. :weight_lifting_man: LOL Sorry for being off topic.

3 Likes

A a Brit who grew up in the middle of England - Memory is a bit sketchy to the 80s, but I am fairly sure “mixtape” is also the name we used. Or just “tape” or “compilation”. Or a “C90” or “C60” based on the lengths of the cassettes.

In this case “mixtape” is a shortening of “Mixture of Music” as I still have tapes mates did for me back in the 80s to introduce me to different music.

@jesus2099 - Sorry, by abilty to read French is rubbish. But I am guessing the English version of that Wikipedia page has been extended from the French one. Plenty of references to the 1970s on there. Even an 8-track mixtape :smiley:

2 Likes

I think mixtape mainly means two things: home-made compilation tapes, mostly for personal use, and the modern “unofficial album” used to raise an artist’s profile and to avoid having to clear samples (or have any kind of quality control for that matter). Nowadays people are more likely to make Spotify or YouTube playlists instead of cassette compilations of course, and most of those compilations have no place on MusicBrainz in the first place.

4 Likes

… in England and/or America. :wink:
See About the word "mixtape".

1 Like

I personally never called them mixtapes, maybe car tapes. I did make a few mix CDs for Valentine’s Day, as a personal sweetheart gift, but that was in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. Those were purpose made and had specific moods and emotions in mind. Thank God that was the only time I wasted time doing that, lol. :face_vomiting::nauseated_face: Happily single now. :sunglasses::+1:

1 Like

No one I know called them “mixtapes” in the 1980s. This was a phrase that appeared in the CD era to describe CDR mixes, around the late 1990s. We just said “I will make you a tape”, because the only tapes you generally made for people would be mixed. So the “mix” part was a given or already assumed. “Cassette” and “tape” were used interchangeably, but “cassette tape” was rarely used since it was also redundant; the only tapes available were in cassette format, since 8-tracks had already died. It’s possible the word was used in the 80s hiphop scene, when literally mixing two records together on tape. Tapes created like that, as opposed to those made on shitty home equipment (like me), might have been referred to as “mixtapes”.

1 Like

My entire teenage, literally age 11-19 was defined by the 80s. We used to call blank tapes that we filled with a variety of tracks “mixed tapes.” Not because the tracks were mixes, but because we were mixing up a bunch of different songs onto one tape.
I’m pretty sure that the word “mixtape” is just an evolution of mixed tape. I’m also pretty sure it didn’t start being used until the early 90s and it didn’t reach its zenith until the advent of CD-Rs. By that point, most millennials only had access to digital music and the term mixtape simply became a generic word to describe any user-made collection of songs – no real tape required.

2 Likes