While surfing the World Wide Web we stumbled across a place called Mixwit. What made us stay and explore the site was the familiar view of a cassette tape. We have a few boxes of those stacked away here at Radio Dupree. Yesterday's technology...
But even if this cassette tape online isn't the real thing, seeing it brought back quite a few memories. Taping favourite songs from the radio... Making mixtapes of music that you liked....
"Look at it! The tape turns and moves from the left to the right just like a real cassette!"
You can also open the playlist and jump between tracks. Just point at the cassette.
The site proved to be a search engine that uses other sites to find music/audio that you can add to your own online mixtape. That can be posted like this:
We just did a search for "Dupree" and took four songs to try the concept out. At least one of these is from a legitimate site, but most of the stuff that Mixwit serves up comes from places on the internet where we're sure no license fees have been paid or contracts signed.
Mixwit is just one of many similar sites, and will probably shut down sooner rather than later if they don't get the legal matters worked out.
Radio Dupree would like to see a fully functioning song-sharing site like this. When we post this all four songs on our "mixtape" play fine, but since Mixwit has no control over the files they can stop working any time. Not good, but something that comes with the way the site has been constructed.
UPDATE FIVE MINUTES AFTER POSTING: Looks like our third track; Nancy Dupree's James Brown has silenced. Probably because the source took down the file. It's just as well, as this post was meant to show off the workings of Mixwit, and disappearing files is one of the "features". ;)
Great to hear Simon Dupree & The Big Sound! Didja know that this was the group that later reformed and took the name Gentle Giant? (another Radio Dupree favourite)
ReplyDelete//Siggy
Occasionally I rediscover the pleasure of unwinding while exploring music, and then I think of my huge vinyl and tape collection, but then I remember the vast amount of free time I used to have and I settle for what I have on iTunes. Lately I've been trying to focus on rediscovering this vinyl and tape collection by trying to get this onto my iTunes. Although I admit my iTunes represents my mostly my old vinyl collection (which I still have) far more than it does my tape collection. Good memories and good music!
ReplyDeleteDear Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. I have two boxes, a couple of hundred tapes of music (mostly "underground" stuff) that I used to listen to. But now it's stashed away. And then there is the huge shelf of vinyl records...
Now and then I do transfer an album or a tape onto my harddrive and then to a CDR, but it's a very slow process. //Siggy
ah, but that's why it's no waste to keep the turntable and cassette tape player around. even though sometimes muffled, the sound is still good.
ReplyDeleteand James Brown, that song is still here. gosh, goosebumps... it's a children's choir???? amazing lol.
LOVE mixwit. am gonna spend some time making one for Mizar6 ... thanks!