While Muxtape's Justin Ouellette just posted a dire story about the shutdown of the popular mixtape service and his dealings with the music industry, Favtape has updated its service dramatically.
Muxtape will effectively remain closed for the general public and will only return as a music hosting service for bands. Favtape, on the other hand, now looks like Muxtape on steroids, with embeddable playlists, album art, integrated YouTube search, a shuffle mode, and the ability to create tapes based on your last.fm and Pandora bookmarks.
While Favtape once started out as a simple Muxtape clone, this new release goes far beyond Muxtape's feature set. One of the most important differences with Muxtape is that you do not have to upload any songs to create a mixtape. Instead, Favtape lets you search for your music and add it to your playlists. To do this, Favtape makes use of SeeqPod's APIs.
Favtape does not host any of the songs itself, but solely relies on SeeqPod's index for its music. SeeqPod indexes MP3s anywhere on the Internet, which surely leaves some doors open for copyright infringement claims by the RIAA. As Ars Technica reports, SeeqPod has already been sued by the RIAA for exactly this business model of providing a 'playable search engine.' If SeeqPod shuts down, Favtape will be left without any music to play.
From a user's perspective, however, Favtape is everything one could wish for in a mixtape service, including a list of the top songs on iTunes and Last.fm, as well as iPhone support and the ability to share your tapes by email or as a Twitter message. Favtape also includes numerous social features and lets you vote for tapes you like.
While we are sad to see the Muxtape we once loved disappear, it is great to see other services jumping into the breach and building upon Muxtape's foundation. It's probably not the perfect streaming music service, but it comes pretty close. Now we just have to hope that it will not be shut down too soon.
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to the degree that favtape is like muxtape, it will be shut down too. I'm not sure that Muxtape really violated IP since you couldn't download the songs, but come on... any service that distributes music without licensing in place is a limited time service...
Posted by: rick | September 25, 2008 8:14 PM
did you know that when a beautiful thing goes "on steroids", it becomes ugly?
Posted by: Don | September 25, 2008 10:51 PM
I love it. I've been compiling data in Pandora for years and FINALLY someone put it to good use.
~Social Sound System
http://www.socialsoundsystem.com
http://www.pandora.com/people/socialsoundsystem
http://www.favtape.com/pandora/socialsoundsystem
Posted by: Social Sound System | September 25, 2008 11:47 PM
Muxtape is not dead ... read the last Justin post http://muxtape.com/
And another news, if you want to create mixtape for MySpace artist, you can also visit MyArtists http://www.musiic.net/myartists
Love music!
Posted by: victor | September 26, 2008 12:04 AM
Shame about Muxtape, but as Rick says, licensing is the big issue. And it's incredibly complicated, as the publishing might belong to one person or company while the tracks belong to someone else. What's the other option? That it belong to one person and company? No, thanks.
Plus, despite all the talk about independent artists that we read, experience shows that people are actually seeking out major label artists the vast majority of the time, and this will always send the issue back to the corporate lawyers. I still enjoy Last.fm, for what it's worth. And they are setting the licensing in place.
Posted by: Michael | September 26, 2008 2:48 AM
waaa, mixtapes are ded!!1 FilthyRichmond.com
Posted by: Joss | September 26, 2008 4:08 AM
Wow now that sounds really good.
www.FireMe.To/udi
Posted by: Jim Jones | September 26, 2008 4:58 AM
Is there any way to download tracks from FavTape?
Posted by: Chad | September 26, 2008 10:20 AM
After using favtape for about 5 minutes it became apparent that it is really nothing like muxtape. The reason people liked muxtape was simplicity and favtape is full to the brim with complexity.
Not that it isn't compelling and interesting. I just don't see it as a muxtape replacement by any means.
Posted by: Cawlin | September 26, 2008 1:49 PM
I'm pretty stoked to see what Justin will do with Muxtape.com now. I've always thought it would be awesome to have a 'band-in-a-box' that makes it easy for bands to make a site.
If you like the whole idea of sharing your taste with people, you should check out Blip.fm too ( http://blip.fm ). It's more interactive than Muxtape/Favtape, so it's not as simple, but it's kinda like having a shared playlist with all your friends.
Posted by: Ian | September 26, 2008 2:42 PM
favetape is like some horrible website abortion
Posted by: web design | September 26, 2008 8:51 PM
It's quiet in here... can you hear the echo?
Posted by: website design | September 27, 2008 8:59 AM
Sounds great,and great ambition。
Posted by: gowers | September 27, 2008 6:55 PM
I'm not sure that Muxtape really violated IP since you couldn't download the songs
Heh heh, you better not believe it. For a rather long time it was possible to get a simple Greasemonkey script that added download links to all songs on Muxtape ;-)
Posted by: Peter Cooper | October 1, 2008 5:49 AM