Tiny Mix Tapes
Tiny Mix Tapes is a music webzine. Originally called Tiny Mixtapes Gone to Heaven [1] and hosted on geocities the site moved to its current domain name in 2001. The site focuses mainly on new independent music and related news.
Description
Tiny Mix Tapes' [2] music reviews are concise and to the point, but also avoid the pitfalls of contemporary indie journalism by not being overly pretentious. The writing staff are volunteers, and are disguised from the outside world by using monikers to hide their real names. The editor-in-chief is Mr P, while Grant Purdum handles the managing of the editing. The News, Music Reviews, Automatic Mixtape Generator, Delorean, Concerts, Articles, Interviews and Tours are handled by Matt Weir, Jay, Trillian, Charles Ubaghs, Leah, Nicolemc99, Leveer and Katiedid respectively [3].
Features
Tiny Mix Tapes offers a wide variety of extra content besides the standard music reviews and news. The "Delorean" [4] section reviews music released before Tiny Mix Tapes began and may no longer be popular or albums that the writer believes "classic" or influentional or even music that maintains a certain place in the writer's canon.
Along similar lines to Delorean, "Eureka" houses reiews of music that resonated with an individual writer. These tend to be underground avant-garde or experimental musicians, but there are no requirements that it be as such.
There is also a section devoted to interviews, and an accompanying concert section where the writers review any concerts they have been to.
The Automatic Mix Tape Generator
The site's defining trait, the Automatic Mix Tape Generator [5] was created to offer a personal contribution to the site. Started in 2002, readers think up a title, or the theme for a mixtape and a group of volunteers called the "Mixtape Robots" will compile a tracklist. Due to the increasing volume of requests as well as a hatred for "Songs to get over the girl" mixtapes, not all requests are filled, although occasionally certain titles will have multiple tracklists.
Idiosyncrasies
The Tiny Mix Tapes news section differiciates itself from other music websites by prefering to present the news in a completely ludicrous fashion. Often though inserting jokes, deliberate misinformation, the writer's politics and personal humour directly into the news story itself.
Since the writers are on a volunteer basis the writing shows more freedom than what is usually written and there have been entire articles that have nothing to do with the original story. These types of journalistic adventures are rare however, and never deal with anything overly important.
Tiny Mix Tapes content often points out the political aspects of music, therefore moving the site's content from the realm simple music journalism into that of cultural analysis and political commentary.