Unless it's wildly different over there, a mixtape is compiled by a third party (often a dj), and the selection of tracks is based on that person's criteria, rather than based on whether there is any contractual relationship between the artists on the mixtape and the maker.
Whereas an album is released on a label, usually by a single artist or crew, or generally by people who have all signed a contract with a label to release that album.
Logan Sama said:
On the underground; Mixtapes = Money all goes to the person who put it out with no legal clearance for anything
In the underground scenes I'm familiar with people spend a lot of their own money to make mixtapes and make no money off it (or maybe I'm not clear on who you mean by "the person who put it out" as if there's a middleman that does add another level of money and distribution.) Or no money directly, although their own dj rep can be raised up by a popular mixtape, which can mean more gigs..
Logan Sama said:
Albums = everything gets cleared and everyone gets paid fairly
Most of the real value of mixtapes to artists is as marketing and promotion, generation of hype, familiarity and attention. SOmething a lot of artists can't afford, and something labels spend lots of money on.. trying to get people to play their tunes to get their sound more widely heard. Mixtapes are a bit like pirate radio (even though they don't pay ASCAP/PRI dues, I think, most artists don't boycott pirate radio).
In my experience in various levels of the US and European underground is that hardly anyone on the creative side makes any money off albums. The "paid fairly" is pretty theoretical, after all the recording, production, marketing and promotions costs are covered. There's a small group of mid-level indie labels where there is money passing around more fairly, usually with artists who have a stable and loyal fanbase on smallish, established labels that have a committed vision of fairness to artists, but for everyone else, albums are a stepping stone to a major label deal where almost no money is made by the artists off copyrights, or to generate ticket sales for concerts.
While in the mainstream nobody gets paid fairly and the label takes nearly all of the money.
Another thing about mixtapes is sometimes they are more musically interesting than an album all by one artist - there is another layer of creativity involved in combining different tunes together, there's often more variety and dynamic range. With a lot of hip-hop I prefer mixtapes for this reason.
sorry that's my pet issue these days so I'm bound to ramble on.
