Fourth Ave., Not-Park Slope (TLH says some jokers call it "Gowanus Heights"), Brooklyn.

I wrote the cover story for today's Circuits section in the NYT: For the Mix Tape, a Digital Upgrade and Notoriety. It's about the culture of mix CDs, the people who make and swap them and the people who want to wipe them out.

I've been thinking about this story for several months and accumulated a lot of related bookmarks in the process. I'm dumping them here for your exploration. The list kicks off with some of the sites mentioned in the story.

-- Crabwalk.com: CD Mix of the Month Club
-- Yahoo! Groups : CD_Trading
-- The Art of the Mix - Making Mix Tapes, Mixed CDs and MP3 Playlists
-- Copyfight: Should Non-Commercial File Sharing Be Illegal?
-- Glorious Noise - Wedding Mixes
-- WeddingCDs.com - make a custom CD for your wedding
-- Metafilter | mix CDs and tapes
-- Washington Post on the death of cassettes
-- Lonely Regicide : A MeFiSwap mix
-- Raspberry World - Music - My CD Mixes
-- Metafilter Swap II
-- The Ataris: Song for a Mix Tape
-- The Automatic Mix Tape Generator
-- Harvard Law School News: Q&A with Jonathan Zittrain on music
-- EFF Copyright and Fair Use FAQ: Sharing Music
-- Macworld: Rip. Mix. Burn. Steal?
-- halfass.com: Comment on The Neglected Mixtape
-- You are talking too loud - Making mixes
-- US Code, TITLE 17 , CHAPTER 1 , Sec. 107. - fair use
-- ZDNet: RIAA response--you're dead wrong

When I was interviewing people for this story, almost everyone mentioned "High Fidelity," Nick Hornby's ode to mix tapes and romantic confusion. Mr. Hornby was kind enough to answer some of my questions about mix CDs by e-mail, but his comments didn't make it into the final story, which ended up focusing more on swapping. I've asked him if I can post his comments here. Stay tuned.

Mr. Hornby's latest project is "Songbook," published by McSweeney's Books. It's a collection of little essays on 31 pop songs. The cover is meant to look like a beat-up old mix tape, but in the back is a CD with 11 of the songs discussed in the book. I wish the eclecticism of the essays had carried over onto the CD, which is too consistently Starbucks-ish, but overall it's a very fun package. Proceeds go to the favorite charities of Mr. Hornby and Mr. Eggers.