The Tape is Dead! Long Live the Tape!

Motivation

First and foremost, we all love mixtapes.

More than this, we also think that they can be a powerful force for change because they capture so many powerful concepts at once.

A mixtape is at once an object and an idea, simultaneously filled with personal emotion, and radical intent; an object of passion (yes) but more often a softer sentimentality, one that reflects something other than the glamorized exterior of the plastic palace of celebrity. We think that Mixtapes are at the grass-roots of all music, and of change. They're the real object that recalls a lover, embodies a friendship, that introduced you to your favourite band, that saw you through that dark night of the soul... Perhaps most radically of all, a mixtape is always a gift. You can't buy a mixtape.

Historically, they've been at the core of every revolution in music since they were invented. The centre of cool in every musical sub-culture from Hip Hop to Punk, Heavy Metal to Folk, friend of every House DJ in between.

They are arguably the most democratic of all art forms. An art form that almost everyone has participated in. A truely social medium. One with history.

We live in an age of new Social Media, where the internet, and mobile phones, have radically interconnected youth to communicate outside the traditional channels provided by broadcast media. Though worth billions of dollars to the shareholders of Facebook and MySpace, the changes made by this radical shift are still in their infant stages, and have yet to fundamentally change any of the traditional broadcast media-- i.e. the big money or institutional media-- except for music industry. Here, downloading has changed the whole economy, all the business models and most of the rules. Elsewhere, Youth remain subjected, forced to be mere spectators. Never actors.

Music, and the humble mixtape, stands opposed to this, and have always been a beacon of light for the initiated.

We believe that we have a simple model of how the status-quo can be challenged. In Radio. we believe we can offer a truly networked, open and democratic radio experience. Using simple technology, and existing social networks, we think it is now possible for young people to do this themselves.

That said, our motivating force might also be stated in quite negative terms.

We share a distaste that payola based play listing dominates today’s radio— where the four 'major label' record companies control most of what we hear, and channel the audience artificially away from what is available, routinely resorting to bribery in addition to the softer power of their Oligopoly (see a ~recent US judgement here). This point is so well accepted that it is almost banal. Like gravity, it's invisible, and is the centre about which any conversation about music must revolve. Often it's too cliché to even talk about, but like the mass of the earth it still affects us.

Inevitably alienated not only young listeners, but also the industry itself from creating any new or evolved programming. Certainly nothing so democratic, open or - dare I say it - free as what we propose.

The statistics in this area are even more sobering. Finding that in any given year ~82% of album sales globally are are from only 4 companies, and made up of only 10 different albums. The market's size is estimated at US$33 Billion dollars.

This is to say, we pay the equivalent cost of implementing the first UNDP Millennium Goal of ending extreme Poverty and Hunger ... Worldwide ... four times over ... in order to support an industry whose function is to restrict the sum total of new music to just 10 CDs a year.

We want to change this.

Project Description

    To invert the nature of traditional broadcast radio by playing only listener contributed media. Empowering the audience to ‘be the media’ in a unique way.

Using the readily available (though not well publicised) ‘Special Event Narrowcast License’, and cheaply available self assembled transmitters, It is possible to start suburb-sized radio stations for periods of up to three weeks, at minimal expense, and with minimal lead time.

This license type has been used to start a station in Sydney before. WILD fm (1996-2001), a dance music station that ran for years, and which expanded into three cities, by acquiring repeated short term licenses like the one we will use.

Our group intends to collect a range of mixtapes through our online networks, and a poster campaign, and then to broadcast the contributed tapes/cd’s on our station.

Essentially we follow the model of wikipedia. We break down the large problem (i.e. that of writing an encyclopedia) into small sections (i.e. defining a word at a time) and share the workload freely amonst the community. For our project this means, breaking down the monolithic problem of programming 168 hours of radio a week into easily digestible chunks (e.g. a tape or CD long, an hour or so each) and ask the community to contribute.

Using the internet to help collect and collate the 'tapes', (which come as burned cd's, minidisks and virtual tapes, DVD-R ...) we minimise the cost and complexity of administering the project.

This process is simple enough to be repeatable, and has the potential to be expanded in the future.

Anyway, back to now and the terrible pleasure of the immediate moment, and a lesson in history.

While I was getting extremely excited about my new find-- the Mixwit app -- I got chatting to Marty Batfreak, who was unsurprised and unimpressed by my find ... in response to my enthusiasm sent me a world of cool links that left me much more impressed: truth be told, giddy to the point offering beer favours in return for it's sheer awesome. The coolest thing he linked me to was this incredibly impressive archive of long-mixes from the mid 90's, all the way to the present. It's almost a history of the Sydney Undeground, and i'm amazed by it. It's awesome, and I recommend it to anyone ... I started by listening to this mix. Have a squiz through the whole thing at b00mb0x.org ... if you want a guide you can try cruising through listen.to/noise ... the requirement for which is thatyou have to dig on the early 90's quickandnasty web design: punk rock meets MSPaint on Windows95...

And you have to.
 
Because I do.

Kes

"boombox... no wait... spell it... b00m b0x... is the brainchild of naz.

And whoever came before him, and the echo of the 80s: the cassette mix.

Doomed to die, the idea of longmix editing was born to many of us from this style, and now, well, we can do it smartwise.

Start the commotion..."