ShareTapes Revamp Retro Music Mixtapes With Today's Technology

Unfortunately the times when we sat down and compiled our music mixtapes are long gone. It’s a shame really. Who doesn’t remember the retro feeling of receiving a mixtape from a friend who told you all about the similar taste in music you both had? Today that is rare, and friendships are based on common status updates on Facebook instead. Don’t fret! A new startup called ShareTapes might just bring all that retroness back into our lives with their idea.

Undertaking this project is a way to preserve the retro look and feel of actually compiling and sharing your mixtape with your friends. Without that, the idea has little meat to it. The way ShareTapes work is very similar to how music mixtapes worked back on the old days. However, instead of using the retro cassette (which I am sure some of you young people have no idea what that is), they use QR and NFC codes to make sure the music mixtapes are easily shared.

The codes are encoded on the ShareTapes, and when they are scanned, the music mixtape is instantly downloaded from Spotify, 8Tracks or even YouTube. It’s a noble idea and one that might just become popular quickly. You simply create your music mixtape compilation on one of these services and then link the list with the number pre-printed on the ShareTapes. That way, your music mixtape will always be unique. You can of course go in and change the music whenever you want, which makes this whole approach even more versatile. The ShareTapes will retail for $6.99 AUD for 5 blank ShareTape cards.

The styling of the ShareTapes, which is the awesome look of a retro cassette, is of course another reason why these ShareTapes music mixtapes could possibly become a huge success. They could very well become the “next gen” music gift cards. The name alone, ShareTapes, gives some hints towards this. How successful this concept will be of course depends on how much we like putting together our own mixtapes. Do young people of today even know what those are? Well, if not, it’s about time it gets introduced into their lives. It was an awesome way to share music, and one that shouldn’t be lost just because the medium we stored them on got updated.