![]() The Evolution of the Mixtape: An Oral History With DJ Drama It was like, ‘Who knows who could be next? Who knows what could happen?’” “A lot of people were scared,” Drama says now, “Because at the time I was the top of the food chain when it came to mixtapes. If the raid that day just over 10 years ago wasn’t quite the day the mixtape died, it was the day the mixtape, and the industry around it, changed forever. ![]() The music industry generally looked the other way, exchanging lost royalties for the promotion and buzz that artists could build from the streets up with multiple “unauthorized” releases per year. By the time of the raid, mixtapes had grown from homemade mix cassettes sold on street corners and barbershops to an underground, semi-legal marketplace where album-quality releases from high-profile rappers generated between 30 million and 50 million sales each year, according to the RIAA, working out to a conservative estimate of $150 million to $250 million annually by the end of 2006.
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