Today the term "mixtape" is more a tongue-in-cheek homage to those awkward days of sitting in front of the tape deck (for those who even remember what that is), pressing the record, pause, and stop buttons.
If you're still a fan, there are a few sites out there that offer free music (usually in exchange for your email). Why not surf the Web of music and download a few songs to make your own mixtape?
Free (Legal) Download Sources
- NoiseTrade is a good site for a lot of free music. They have a variety, but this time of year there are a lot of Christmas albums (both religious and sectarian) available.
- LastFM is probably best known for its streaming music service, but it also has a free downloads section
- Jamendo is another site offering indie and creative common music. They have a good mix of Jazz, hip-hop, folk, etc.
- The Free Music Archive is also good for those weird or really old recordings & interviews.
If you don't want to be inundated with emails from each of the musical artists, create a junk email account. (To make it easy, I used my regular email address followed by the word junk, as in "my-regular-email.junk@mail.com".) I use this whenever I'm signing up for something that might send me repeated sales or junk emails. That email then gets funneled directly into my junk mail folder (thank you technology.)
Free Printable CD Envelopes
And what would a mixtape be without a cool cover? You can, of course, create your own but I've designed a few different retro CD envelopes—free for you to download and print.
