mixtape

noun

mix·tape ˈmiks-ˌtāp

variants or less commonly mix tape

plural mixtapes also mix tapes

: 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

: 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

Examples of mixtape in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

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Cal, a wealthy progressive Southern Democrat, enjoys drinking, making mixtapes (a detail that pays off in the series’ use of bad cover versions of most of his favorite ’80s and ’90s pop favorites), and bantering with Xavier about basketball. —

Daniel Fienberg, The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Jan. 2025 Unk went on to release several mixtapes in the late 2000s and about a half-dozen singles through 2015, none of which charted. —

Erik Pedersen, Deadline, 24 Jan. 2025 While Future’s works, like the legendary mixtape Dirty Sprite and album DS2, have described his own drug use, most notably lean, he’s also expressed regrets about it. —

Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 23 Jan. 2025 It was recorded between the releases of his 2013 album Watching Movies With the Sound Off and 2014 mixtape Faces, both of which were noteworthy at the time as the rapper went a more mature direction with honest explorations of issues like drug addiction and mental illness. —

Chris Malone Mendez, Forbes, 17 Jan. 2025 See all Example Sentences for mixtape