In the olden days, boys and girls used to spend hours using double cassette decks to carefully craft mix tapes to share in order to express their innermost longings in an artsy way. It sometimes led to love and inadvertently increased record sales by sharing a little taste of previously undiscovered bands.

Then came Napster and the CD burner, making the process even easier. Finally, mix sharing was thoroughly disrupted by online “mixtape” sharing sites such as the popular Muxtape, whose sharing function was disabled by the RIAA over a year ago. Following the closure of that site, we posted a list of alternatives last summer. Already, 60 percent of them are now offline for various reasons, in at least one case due to major label lawsuits.

These online mix-sharing sites are clearly something of a moving target, because they tend to operate under the radar or pay unmanageable licensing fees. But we’ve turned up a fresh batch you can use to share virtual mix tapes with friends and strangers around the world, without paying a cent.

Without further ado, here are the eight best ways to share playlists (honorable mentions below):

Listropolis’ Take:

This post makes me realize how much I miss Muxtape, but it gives the best sites I’ve seen to replace that hole in my heart. If you’re a music fan, you’ll love this list.

See the List

Related Reading:

Norton Anthology of Western Music: Volume 2: Classic to Twentieth Century

Sheet Music: Uncovering the Secrets of Sexual Intimacy in Marriage

Entertainment, Media And the Law: Text, Cases And Problems (American Casebook Series)