Features
Are Mixtapes Dead?
New York writer, Ethan Brown, has written a post about heading down to his record store and finding the mixtape selection lacking.
New York writer, Ethan Brown, has written a post about heading down to his record store and finding the mixtape selection lacking. After those Drama raids in January, it appears picking up mixtape CDs on the streets is a little harder now a days.
A few days ago, I paid a visit to my local mixtape purveyor here in NYC. I won’t mention his name or give his location, but let’s just say that in the very recent past this guy did a booming business, particularly when hot tapes like Dedication 2 or Back Like Cooked Crack or Mood Muzik came out (indeed, this guy has even been shouted-out on several popular mixtapes).
Anyway, I hadn’t seen this guy for months and when I visited his little shop recently he seemed completely down. There was almost no stock on his shelves, no customers save one annoying guy asking for an exchange on a purchase, and worst of all, he complained bitterly that several big recent mixtapes (like Wayne’s Drought 3) “never dropped†(meaning they were never released on CD).
Now, I know after the Drama raid a lot of mixtapes have been released straight to the Internet but I thought many of them were coming out on CD as well. My mixtape guy says that this isn’t happening. Is he right? - Ethan-Brown.com
Coming from Australia, G-Up hasn’t felt the bite so much since all our stock comes through the net anyway. But is the game coming to and end? If there is a decline, will mixtapes become internet-only or is their a way to keep releases up without the RIAA breathing down our necks?
The most obvious solution is to rid tapes of jacked beats. Easier said than done.
But what if there was a [free] market of beats available for use exclusively on mixtapes? Meaning these tracks could be used, royalty free, for any project, for an unlimited time.
Some concessions need to be made on the part of producers since there is the very likely scenario of someone making a lot of money from your beat while you aren’t entitled to a cent. But let’s look at the positives instead of one [fairly selfish] negative.
What do you think?
[Photo: AdrianF]
© 2008 Copyright Ground Up HipHop
Well Craig, let me offer one perspective on your fantasy scenario… all beats used in this fashion (I believe the Internetz refer to it as ‘Creative Commons’) would have to be sample-free to truly kill the RIAA noise. Which leaves us with shiny synth beats, which are fine for Jeezy et al, but don’t sit so well with, say, Method Man.
The other side of this coin is that original compositions (as compared to jacked loops) require far more effort and creativity to produce, therefore producers will keep all their truly memorable/catchy sh*t in the stash and provide the mixtape market with their shabby leftovers.
My two cents.
although true to some extent, sample-free does not equal synth-only.
pick a meth beat and it could be made sample-free. with synths-only even.
granted, producers would - at first - not put much effort into royalty-free beats. but given time and exposure, it would become as competitive a market as paid beats are now.
how much effort does an MC put into a mixtape spot?