Muxtape Returns With a New Focus on Legal Music
We have often bemoaned the demise of Muxtape, one of our favorite online mixtape services. Sadly, Muxtape had to close shop because of the inevitable RIAA takedown notices. Now, however, Muxtape is getting ready for a comeback, but alas, it won't be the same service we had come to love last year. Instead, Muxtape will only focus on hosting tapes for bands.
Justin Ouellette, Muxtape's CEO and Founder just announced a preview version of the new Muxtape, which he has seeded with songs from twelve bands, including indie favorites like of Montral.
Muxtape will allow other bands to sign up in the next few weeks. How exactly the developers are planning to police the site is not clear yet.
Artist Pages
The most important addition to the new Muxtape are the artist pages, which are currently dominated by profile pictures of the artists. Otherwise, the new Muxtape works exactly like the old Muxtape - just without the ability to create your own mixtapes.
Big Plans
In the future, Ouellette and his team plan to allow bands to sell downloads of their songs, issue tickets for concerts, and sell merchandise. For now, however, we are glad to see that Muxtape is still alive and well, though we are still sad to report that the old Muxtape won't return anytime soon.
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That's kind of sad in a way. It's like the moment in Cuckoo's Nest when (spoiler alert) you realize he's been lobotomized.
Thank God! I've been missing Muxtape. With a new focus on bands, will we still have the sweet playlists?
Good article, but you misspelled Of Montreal. Check out goosegrade.com!
I'm glad they're back with a legal model.
While it may seem unfair that we don't have access to what we'd like, it's also a good test case for the rhetoric of 'free' - if there really IS an economic benefit to giving stuff away for free (as is often claimed) that then bands/labels will have a vested interest in making their music available on services like Muxtape.
One small thing that people need to understand is that while it might be in the interest of musicians to give their music away for free, a lot of the time the musician didn't actually put the investment into the recording - as a tenuous metaphor, it's a little like me designing a shoe, but saying I don't mind if you shoplift it from Walmart as I'd rather see people wearing 'my' shoes.
It's that separation between the artist and the investors in the recording that complicates the relationship. Unless you're making good money from royalties, the musician has more interest in being heard, while the label has more interest in getting their money back / making money on their investment. There is a direct contradiction in motivations.
(And while we talk a lot about cutting out the middle man, but we vote with our wallets and Bittorrent requests for professionally, rather than self-recorded stuff)
Their site doesn't seem to work in IE... or Google Chrome.
Good for Muxtape! Kinda funny that Girl Talk, whose label is Illegal Art and whose album is completely composed of uncleared samples, is one of the featured artists.