Inside the Mixtape Museum: Saving Cassettes and Stories to Preserve Our Musical DNA
Mixtapes aren’t just nostalgic relics—they’re cultural artifacts that reveal how people used cassettes to create, share, and document music outside traditional channels. The Mixtape Museum highlights how these homemade compilations empowered artists, built underground communities, and preserved hidden histories now at risk of being lost. By uncovering the stories and data within each tape, this work shows how analog creativity still shapes how we collect, share, and connect through music today.
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Keep creating, keep listening, and let the music move you.™️
—Sean Martin, Host, Music Evolves Podcast
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🔆 Key Episode Highlights
❶ Mixtapes are more than music—they are cultural time capsules.
Each tape holds memories, hidden data, and social connections that reveal how people made and shared music before digital playlists existed.
❷ Preservation is a collective effort, not just a physical archive.
Sommer emphasizes that the goal isn’t to hoard tapes in a single building but to support collectors everywhere, document their stories, and build a community that values these analog artifacts.
❸ The spirit of mixtapes lives on in today’s music culture—but something vital gets lost without the physical craft.
Digital playlists mimic mixtapes but can’t fully recreate the intentional sequencing, handwritten notes, and physical exchange that once made sharing music so personal and meaningful.
🎤 Meet the Guest
Regan Sommer McCoy, Chief Curator of the The Mixtape Museum (MXM) | Website: https://sommer.nyc/
🎙️ Meet the Host
Host: Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine Podcasts and Host of Music Evolves Podcast | View Profile
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📒 Resources
Mixtape Museum: https://mixtapemuseum.org/
💬 Join the Conversation
What’s the first mixtape you ever made—or the one you still can’t let go of? How do you think mixtapes shaped the way we share music today?
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⭐️ About Sean Martin
Sean Martin is a life-long musician and the host of the Music Evolves Podcast ; a career technologist, cybersecurity professional, and the Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast; and is the co-host of the Random and Unscripted Podcast and the On Location Event Coverage Podcast. These shows are all part of ITSPmagazine—which he co-founded with his good friend Marco Ciappelli, to explore and discuss topics at The Intersection of Technology, Cybersecurity, and Society.™️
Want to connect with Sean and Marco On Location at an event or conference near you? See where they will be next: https://www.itspmagazine.com/on-location
To learn more about Sean, visit his personal website.
