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Anyone who is old enough to have ever had one of these knows how great mixtapes are and how nice it was to receive one from someone.
Mixtapes were 60 or 90 minutes long, and a person couldn’t just drag and drop a bunch of files into a flash drive folder, or, dating back another level, drop a bunch of files into a cd folder and burn the cd.
A person had to have a tapedeck that had two decks. They had to cue up each song and hit record and play at the same time, then wait and listen to the whole song and stop it at the exact moment, then run the mixtape a bit to leave the appropriate amount of space. They had to plan out the end of the tape especially: either you would have a bunch of empty space at the end of each side of the tape or you would have a song cut off part way. Or a short song would get a chance to be on a mixtape.
A mixtape was also a gift. You gave them to boyfriends and girlfriends, to friends, to family members. They had all your favorite songs or all you though the recipient would like. And when you got one, you had to listen to every song. If they put a song on there you didn’t like, you either had to listen to it or go to your tape deck and fast forward it to the next song and try to find the next song.
They’d also be given when someone was turning someone else onto a new style of music or a new band or something.
What was the best mixtape you ever received? If you have a photo, post that photo. If we get enough, we’ll make a picture gallery of them all. 
