Music Mixtapes, The Other Side

by Lisa Gonzalez

There have been a lot of bad things happening in the mainstream music industry leaving major recording artists and fans bitter. On the flip side of things, mixtapes are booming better than ever. It’s the rave and everybody and their Mama wants mixtapes now. Websites are dedicated to finding out who the big bang is on the streets, chat rooms filled with chatters throwing out some amateur gangsta rhymes and even new talent out there mixing up some cool new sounds, right now.

So the big question is, why are mixtapes becoming more popular?

The answer is pure music and a generation who is sick of big recording companies pushing artists and fans around. The music that comes from mixtapes is real and some of the stuff out there is from big artists like 50 Cent, Biggie and a more! Stuff that nobody hears, great stuff that should be heard but it’s not, you’ll hear it on mixtapes.

An article featured on the MTV website quoted successful artist and producer P. Diddy, “Labels don’t even have the heart to put out a new artist right now”.

Other artists who are choosing to make their names big using mixtapes instead of the corporate music world usually agree that one of the advantages to the mixtape industry is that they are not limited in what they can produce. “The mixtapes are like me speaking directly to my neighborhood”, says famed rapper 50 Cent who also released many mixtapes before being backed up by a major recording contract.

Even mixtape producers claim that record companies use their services, often swapping unreleased goods for favors rather than paying with cold hard cash. If you wanna get your hands on some ‘real jams’, get a mixtape! There are thousands of ways to get or listen to one and one of them is the Internet. Sites do sell mixtapes but the only way to get the real answers to who’s hot and who’s not is mixtape chat rooms and forums where users converse about their mixtapes.

Either way, the industry is getting better and better. The next big wave of the future could be mixtapes sold at a national retail level, could basement producers be pushing the big dogs out of cushy recording company offices? The future is bright for mixtapes and we’ll have to wait and see.