Music has a special place in many of our hearts. A single song can take the listener back to memories long since forgotten, a trip in the mountains, a first kiss, a favorite holiday. If a lone song can produce so many vivid memories, then a collection has the power to truly send one on a nostalgia trip. The mixtape then, is a powerful thing.

In recent years, mixtapes have been used to promote lesser known artists or for well known talents to put music out in a less expensive or formal manner. What seems to be getting overlooked as time has gone on, however, is the art of making a mixtape for personal use, and this is distressing news. It’s easy enough to share Spotify playlists, but to burn a CD or make a legitimate mixed tape is a labor of love that’s just as much about the effort as it is the music.

There’s a pretty simple argument for the cause of the physical mixtape: what would you rather receive: a zip file of mp3’s, or a disc cased in plastic with handwritten liner notes? The unfortunate truth, however, is that as technology sloughs off unnecessary features, the disk reader is going the way of the tape deck, and so when handed a CD it can feel more like a disappointment than an honor when you receive something so special that you can’t even listen to. Yes, it’s possible to buy an external disk drive, but no, no one wants to spend $50 on something so unnecessary. Even cars are starting to forego the CD player, so what’s going to be left of the mixtape?

Though the physicality of the mixtape is a significant portion of what makes them so special, the obvious reason it’s so much fun to make and receive mixtapes is because of the music. Here you have a very carefully assembled group of songs that speak to a certain memory or feeling, and when they’re good, they’re better than any normal album could ever hope to be. In making a mixtape, there is a focus on the music and the order it’s been placed in. More and more it seems that people are only interested in listening to a hit single, or even just the chorus of a single, and we forget that that song is usually nestled alongside many others in an album. The mixtape helps bring musical synergy back into the mainstream; it’s not about one song, it’s about how many songs can make one another better.

Despite the fact that it’s unlikely anyone will be getting a physical mixtape anytime soon, I don’t really think the medium is going anywhere. Fire seems to be getting dropped on the daily by rappers and hip-hop artists, and just as the mixtape made the transition from cassette to disk, so will it survive as a purely digital craft. As long as the music is good and the arrangements thoughtful, the mixtape will always survive.