i got into making mixtapes VERY recently and the process is pretty straightforward but it confused me a lot. i'm young so the idea of making tapes was fun and all, but i never really understood the logistics of recording music onto a tape, and the guides i found online seemed to assume you knew on some level how tapes work. i still don't really know how tapes work but here's how i stumbled my way into having five mixtapes at the time of writing that i made in like a couple days.

• blank tape: you can get deadstock blank tapes pretty easily online, especially if you go secondhand like on facebook marketplace or mercari and find people offloading blank tapes in bulk for real cheap because no one cares about tapes. or you can get them off amazon like i did but it'll cost more and i regret it since seeing the secondhand prices lol. the kind of tape matters only with regards to how much music you're putting on i guess, i mean there's probably more to it but for most purposes you just have to think about how much you're putting on a tape and swing for 60 minutes or 90 minutes. my tapes are all on the short side but i went with 90 minute tapes because it wasn't much more and it's just nicer to have the option.