But right now it appears that DJs are looking on the outside of what was their primary way of increasing their reputation not even a decade ago. The mixtape’s form never remained static during these past decades. Even the most anticipated mixtape of 2015, Barter 6, wound up on iTunes and Spotify as an official Young Thug release through 300 Entertainment/Atlantic rather than a Livemixtapes download.
Drake, one of the world’s biggest rappers, was going to release his latest project, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, as a free mixtape until Cash Money stepped in and pushed the project to iTunes instead of releasing the project for free to Datpiff. That recent shift in power is only helped with the prominence of YouTube and SoundCloud, where an artist like Chief Keef can receive millions of listens on a song before releasing a DJ-approved mixtape, because it’s through YouTube and even Instagram that his music really lives. Though the site’s significant popularity rose a couple years later through releases from Wiz Khalifa, Meek Mill, and Mac Miller-all who were from Pennsylvania, where the site started-that moment in 2007 was the sign that maybe online instead of physical media could be the future. "Really what did was open up the floodgates for us, because we’re doing things legitimately by the books…We are not profiting off the mixtapes directly, we’re profiting off the ad space, premium subscriptions," said Kyle Reilly, who is the Head of Music at Datpiff. The lane for another mixtape path opened.ĭ, which began a decade ago and now stands as one of the biggest mixtapes websites, owes a bit of thanks to that particular legal dispute.
But the next shift was sparked by the 2007 raid of DJ Drama and his Aphilliate Music Group for thousands of mixtapes, as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) cracked down on the selling of bootleg versions of major label artists’ music.
=-=-=-Mixtapes within rap started as party mix cassettes, then moved into DJ blend tapes of the '90s, and by the early 2000s mixtapes were no longer tapes but bootleg CDs, where one would find the latest music from the likes of the Diplomats and G-Unit.