Does anybody else miss cassette tapes? Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t going to be some rant about how much better it was back when people played SNES and dinosaurs roamed the earth. I’m a fully paid-up, travelcard-bearing passenger on the digital music train. I was a couple of years late in getting rid of my dusty old Discman, but I got there in the end. And, like everybody else, I now can’t imagine life without my little black box of a million songs.

My nostalgia for the cassette really only exists for one reason – I miss making mix tapes. When I was a teenager, before I got my new fangled CD walkman, making mix tapes was a compulsion. My nights would be spent sorting through CDs, cherry-picking the best tracks, arranging them into a natural order that would take the listener on a roller coaster ride of tunes (as I might have said back then – but who remembers how they talked as a fourteen year old? All I can remember is saying “div” a lot). My days would be spent striding around town with my new mix filling my head, feeling like a master of sound. Yes, I was a pretentious twat back then. But that’s what teenagers do, isn’t it?

Nowadays, we don’t really need mix tapes. We’ve got all our music in one place, and any song we’ve a hankering for is a couple of button presses away. We’ve truly liberated our favourite songs. Why would we want to cage them in archaic plastic boxes again?

But there was something about making a mix, wasn’t there? It wasn’t just your 15 favourite songs. It was something you concentrated on, planned, tweaked, made perfect. It was a project. Whether you were making a grand concept album or just “Beach Mix: Summer ‘02”, a mix was something to care about, to swap and share with your friends. That’s what I miss about mix tapes.

But that capricious goblin called Fate was clearly listening to my grumbles (I’m sure the little ball bag has bugged my living room), and promptly delivered the answer to my geek prayers. At the end of March this year, an indescribable genius called Justin launched a website called muxtape.com. At the end of June this year, my good buddy Tim introduced me to it.

Muxtape is a site that allows you to create a custom mp3 mix tape from your personal library of songs by uploading them on to the website. You can name and briefly describe your album, which is then available to be listened to by anyone who visits the site. So as well as being able to make and share your own mix, you can also check out the mixes that other people put together. The site has been made to encourage us to not only share music, but to present it to each other with love and care – something in danger of being drowned out amidst the bang and bluster of the digital revolution.

So check the website out. It’s like making a mix tape. Only easier.