All right, mixtapes are anything but new. The thing is, though, tapes are old, and mix-CDs are getting to be dated concepts already with the world of Spotify and Last.fm playlists, bit torrents and file-sharing.

But something about the mixtape ideal persists unflinchingly beneath the relentless 'advances' of technology and mainstream culture. So comforting is the idea of discovering awesome music by the haphazard means of sticking a stranger's compilation into your stereo and hitting the Play button, that 'mixtape projects' have started to become highly organised and increasingly familiar ways of tune-sharing.

The whole concept is like an ideological antidote to file-sharing. In contrast to that phenomenon, the legal disputes are unenforced, weak and by now rather dusty; and the emphasis is on accessing music about which you may initially know nothing - not to mention receiving it from a single source who has selected a set of thoughtfully arranged tracks which they feel are worth sharing with someone else. The indie overtones are clearly audible in all that, but that's no shameful thing, now, is it?

The International Mixtape Project (IMP) is the largest coherent effort to encourage this sort of music sharing, and to do so on a global scale. Members sign up and enter a mixtape-exchanging super network which promotes aural diversity and interchange. In their own words, "Every month, each active IMP member is assigned the name and address of another member somewhere else in the world. The rest is simple: Send an awesome mix...Receive an awesome mix!" They charge you $10 to be part of this network, which we're guessing is to help pay for the website's bandwidth (every member has their own 'profile' page where they can publish information about their musical interests and what they've received through the IMP). But mixtape projects can spring up anywhere. Recently, thanks to the communicative hub of social networks like Facebook, that's exactly what's been happening - especially in UK and US universities.

One of the most prolific uni mixtape projects is the one at Cambridge, England. The originator is Daniel Cohen, of London. He explains how interest in the International Mixtape Project gave him the initial idea of setting up a similar network at university.

"I made CDs for people in Greece and China, and received one from the US. I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't able to keep up with the monthly deadlines, and before long I was kicked off the Project.

"Then, about a year and a half ago, I found myself on a flight to Rome with someone I knew from Cambridge. She had set up something called Post Art, which delivered art to people's pigeonholes every week. She also mentioned that she had initially hoped that people would get more involved in making the art each week, rather than simply receiving it, and that got me thinking about some kind of mass project involving music. The next month, back in Cambridge, I set up the Mixtape Project over Facebook, expecting some mild interest, and was amazed at how many people wanted to sign up."

In fact, over 500 people signed up to the original Facebook group - not bad for an underground indie movement. The internal mail systems at universities mean that they're excellent places to facilitate mixtape exchanges without incurring hefty postage charges.

There's an artistic edge to the movement - as you might expect - and mixtapers often put a lot of thought into the presentation of their CDs or tapes as well as the actual music that comes on them.

"The most enthusiastic reactions are often in response to the packaging of a CD," Cohen said. "Some people really have put an extraordinary amount of effort in: one guy made a 15-page comic book to accompany his CD; another based his CD around train journeys he had taken, and made the packaging out of old train tickets."

There's a similar project at Leeds university, and something called 'Mixtape University' in America tries to connect a number of universities via a (slightly more commercialised) mixtape project.

Oxford students have just started their own project, which will make use of the same sort of internal mail system they have at Cambridge. Jack Orlik, who's behind the Oxford scheme, said, "hopefully it will create new social links, and inspire students to think about and create music by opening their ears to the tastes of others."

And mighty fine aims those are, too. It's good to see that the whole concept of mixtaping is getting stronger rather than weaker as technology changes, and it's certainly satisfying to see students employing handy features of university infrastructure to mixtape ends.

Oh, and if all this talk of tapes is getting you nostalgic and missing that old super-stereo you waved farewell to back in the 90s, you might want to check this little YouTube video out. Retro styles meet contemporary technology. Ace.