My interest in music has waned in recent years, and considering I was a guitar major and a rabid music snob in my youth, that's no small thing. I have been blaming it on old age, the poor quality of today's music, but maybe it's due to the demise of the tape cassette. Like the author of this article, I spent hours, days even, perfecting the mix tape. Sometimes I'd even have to go back and edit if the order or selection didn't work. I miss the mix tape, and though I love my iPod it's just not the same.

And there's one more point you could make: The tape limited you to 60 or 90 minutes; in comparison, the MP3 players seem to have a nearly infinite capacity. True art blooms under limitations. The 45 minutes per side forced you to hone your skills and your taste. That seems lost as well now that the possibilities seem sadly endless.

-- Eric Keller

Thank you, Joel Keller, for your ode to the mix tape. I'm one of the few dedicated cassette listeners left, I fear, and I too mourn the tape's demise heavily. In my college years, my friends and I perfected the art of the mix tape to the point where tapes moved beyond musical compilations and became currency and a form of communication. We had rules, but of course rules are meant to be broken. We noted each other's control of musical flow, the use of random bits of comedy weirdness to keep the proceedings lively, and how close we could get to using the entire tape without cutting off any songs or making a choppy transition. We had special mix-tape songs we saved for the perfect tape. There was an art to it that showed a genuine investment in the music and, perhaps even more importantly, an investment in the presentation of music. As you so brilliantly noted, all that is lost with a CD. You spend two minutes creating a playlist, click "burn," and you're done. Then you pop in the CD, listen for 10 minutes, and fall asleep.

I'm also a DJ, and I resent having to put my mixes on CDs if I want anybody to buy them. The move to CD has hurt the mix-tape game greatly. The cassette tape is so much more up to the mix-tape task than a CD. You record in two 30- (or 45-) minute segments, which allows you to set up themes, opposites, questions and answers, you name it. I used to make mixes to fit on a 60-minute tape, which I would then burn to CD. Now that tapes are dead to the public, I only make CDs. I try my best to approximate the cassette-mix experience on CDs, but it's just not the same.

But I'll be damned if I give up my tapes. I never leave the house without my Walkman. I don't own an iPod, nor do I want one. I don't even own a CD player, save my computer's CD-ROM. Tapes were and are the perfect format for me, and when it comes to making mixes, the CD can't hold a candle to the cassette. I still have a few friends who listen to tapes. I still make tapes for them when I can. I've gotta keep my mix-tape chops up. And I still listen to the tapes my friends gave me and smile. No radio programmer -- much less an iPod on "shuffle" -- can even come close to those tapes.

-- Pete Babb

After reading Joel Keller's article I too find myself longing for the days when every moment of music on the tapes I made served a specific purpose; I felt I was putting out genuine articles of self-expression. When I make CDs for people now, I hardly even concern myself with the order in which I place the songs because I know friends will probably just rip the CDs and add them to their libraries in pieces.

But I am not in mourning, because technology has invented a whole new hobby for me. Downloading music, be it illegally, gives me an even deeper feeling of connection with the music I choose to listen to now. Downloading music is an act that requires as much attention to detail and sustained concentration as making a mix tape. Managing downloads, ensuring each file is of high quality, and then deciding whether or not a new song, artist, or album will enter my song queue gives me a real sense of ownership of the music (ironic, since legally I don't own it). Knowing that I have almost any artist available to me means that I have spent more time creating and deciding my musical tastes and finding artists that match them. I feel like I am engaging the music I listen to more actively than I ever had, even when I was making mix tapes.

I am not trying to advocate or justify file sharing here. This has just been my experience. Wasn't making a mix tape just a different way of "file sharing" anyway?

-- Patrick Ripton

Joel Keller's article was right on target. Not only would my friends and I make mix tapes for each other, but occasionally we would work together on one. Back in 1989 my friend Scott and I would hang out in his room for hours -- listening to music, watching "Star Wars" or some rented videos. Scott could make the best mix tapes because he had his VCR hooked up to his stereo. Between songs he'd put snippets of dialogue from movies and TV shows. We made a mix tape for my girlfriend because she enjoyed the tapes he had made for me. We had so much fun making that tape! We could also record thorough a mic, so we did little comedy skits or just talked between some of the songs. I can't help but smile thinking about it.

I broke up with my girlfriend (then wanted her back -- but it was too late), but I made a copy of that mix tape while we were still together. After the pain had gone, the joy of making that tape came shining through my stereo speakers.

I haven't listened to that tape in years. It's in a drawer across the room somewhere, buried beneath other memories. I do the whole MP3/iTunes/iPod thing now. I still make mix CDs for people; I even keep the playlists in iTunes and my iPod and when I play back the "mix" I made, I do think of the person I made it for.

But Joel's right. It's not the same. It's worse in some ways, better in others. But it can't beat an evening with Scott, dancing to "Bust a Move" and doing an impromptu rendition of the theme from "The Monkees" (which, to this day, I swear seemed like a good idea at the time).

The mix tape is dead. Long live the mix tape.

-- Joseph Prisco

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