Frontier Justice 15: Make it Mux’d Up

By Johnny Loftus

So these guys made this site called Muxtape, which the Internet may have told you about. It looks like Super Breakout, only on cassette. Don’t fear that last word. Muxtape is on the Internet; it only pretends to be on tape. That means you don’t need my special Marantz 5030 cassette deck/MacBook hybrid in order to make mixes. I wish I wouldn’t have spent all those years developing that thing. Who knew no one would need a Mac with two external cassette decks?

Anyway, Muxtape enables relatively painless uploads of MP3s, which can then be sequenced into 12-song playlists. It takes a little bit of tech knowhow and a little more intuitive sense to manage a mix on Mux — two hours had passed before I’d navigated my way into the site’s setup area, created an account, uploaded my songs, sequenced my playlist, and sat back to watch “Law & Order” episodes on mute while I listened to both my sweet mux mix and the tremendous early spring thunderstorm that raged outside.

Check out the Internet news cycle, though: in a world where vaginas have teeth, it has way more. Muxtape has only been around for a few weeks, and already the discussions about its merits have given way to predictions of or even hopes for its failure. Most seem to agree that it looks cool, even if some think practicality has been sacrificed in the service of aesthetics, or even insularity. (My man DataWhat has a great breakdown of Mux versus a few sites with competing methods of mixology.) I did have some trouble with server delays during my upload, and once, when I tried to leave, Muxtape crashed my Firefox browser. (Jerk!) But I consider those factors to be usual hazards of Internet use. What I really can’t believe is that the site launched without a usable search function. What good are all those colorful boxes full of super musical potential if I can’t break them out into playlists I actually want to hear?

Maybe if Muxtape fails to catch on or is otherwise run out of Tune Town, I can finally interest investors in my Marantz/MacBook hybrid. With my machine, you can make rad mix tapes just by depressing PLAY and RECORD on one deck as you sequence and enjoy your favorite music tracks in the other. Sold, lost, or forgot about your cassette collection? No problem. With my hybrid — I’ve been calling it the AnalogBook around my living room couch/research facility — you can use iTunes to export your digital jams right onto cassette. In the program menu, simply go to Preferences and click the “Advanced” tab. Then look for the option to export using the special analog encoder. Let’s hope my design is approved so we can all stop fiddling with these fly-by-night online mixes. Plus, once I have the seed money, I’ll make modern mix taping even more fun with a special AM/FM tuner add-on that will allow you to tape “The Flamethrowin’ Five” off B-96 FM at 9pm on weekday evenings. In retrospect, it seems more rewarding to have compiled my childhood mix tapes that way, anyway.

JTL

Tags: Muxtape, Marantz, MacBook, Law & Order, Flamethrowin’ Five, Frontier Justice, Johnny Loftus