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[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
Wednesday's word is...

...mixtape.

Noun. [miks-teyp]

I finished reading BTS: Beyond the Story and was struck by this little footnote, which gave the definition.

1. an official free album or song. The term first came into use in the days of cassette tapes and has multiple other meanings that are rarely used today. [emphasis mine]

So, in BTS vocabulary a 'mixtape' is a solo release of songs which are not an album. RM put out RM and Mono. Agust D (SUGA) put out Agust D and D-2. jhope put out Hopeworld. They don't call these albums but mixtape, but Indigo, D-DAY, and Jack in the Box are considered solo albums.

Of course, being old and not steeped in K-pop for most of my life, I thought a mixtape was this (the way it was used when it first appeared as a term in 1985).


2.a noncommercial compilation of songs copied (as onto a cassette tape or a CD) from various sources

In high school, I'd be making mixtapes for friends and girls instead of doing my homework, spending hours perfecting how a Smiths song and Joy Division song and Pixies song would convey the way I feel.
—Aaron Axelsen, quoted at SFGate.com
Writers like Nick Hornby have imbued the cassette tape with considerable romance, in particular the mix tape created for a loved one. In practice, these were often recorded directly from the radio, requiring your typical suburban suitor to sit around for hours on end, waiting for the desired track to appear.
—Richard Glover

the BTS definiton is more like this, but Big Hit is a label so not quite.


3. an album that is usually recorded and distributed without the involvement of a record label
The mixtape is an unofficial release. It might be tied to an imprint or a label, but it doesn't necessarily appear in stores. In fact, most of them can be purchased only on the streets, at the clubs, from the trunks of cars or from the artists themselves.
—Lance Scott Walker
Long before rap got any radio love, mixtapes were the main form of distribution, the currency that kept everything in rotation as the culture evolved.
—Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael
High-fidelity and laden with hits, So Far Gone had the sheen of a professional studio album, and it popularized the idea of mixtapes as low-pressure showcases for burgeoning artists.
—Jonah Bromwich

mixtape

Date: 2024-10-16 11:54 pm (UTC)
debriswoman: (Default)
From: [personal profile] debriswoman
Fascinating variations on the definition I tend to think of 🙂

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