Yesterday, in a matter of about 12 hours, Muxtape, a site that lets you create playlists, exploded all over the place. It's definitely cool, but ya gotta wonder if it can last without any licensing agreements. (Update: My Muxtape. Not a single Rick Roll in there.)
I've seen some concern about that, but isn't Muxtape basically a platform for scaled down music blogs? They don't have to have licensing agreements, do they? They might have to put in a few more limitations, and maybe do a little more policing of the songs that are posted, but as long as they keep it small i don't see what the difference between a Muxtape (too soon to use that as a noun?) and a site like Fluxblog/Gorilla vs Bear is. Am i wrong in thinking this?
posted by bg5000 at 12:42 PM on March 26, 2008 
You upload tracks to Muxtape and you share them with other people. It's much closer to Napster than to LimeWire (or music blogs, for that matter).
Size of the site has nothing to do with the legalities of it.
Fluxblog adheres to take-down requests. If Muxtape does too, then it will be in the clear... I'm not sure how that'll work though... again, this makes it more similar to YouTube v. Viacom than anything else.
posted by Rex at 12:50 PM on March 26, 2008
You share them with other people but those people can't download them in the way they could from Napster or on a lot of music blogs (unless there's a program out there that will rip them from the page, which there very well could be). It's just a fancy /index page that let's you play mp3s in your browser.
And by "keep it small" i just meant that they shouldn't try and draw attention to themselves (like be able to upload 100 songs at once or let people download your mixtape). I agree with you that i don't know how they would actually monitor what's there and comply with take down requests, though. Considering that you can put up and take down songs as often as you want, as well as label them whatever you want, it seems like that would be pretty difficult to get rid of any problem songs. Granted, i don't know anything about how record labels go about finding these kinds of songs, but this might make them harder to find in the first place, so it may be a wash.
posted by bg5000 at 2:29 PM on March 26, 2008
My guess at what might make it less offensive is that all of the posted files are streaming rather than downloadable.
posted by josh at 2:42 PM on March 26, 2008
Argh! What a great site!
http://stopusnot.blogspot.com/
http://stopusnot.muxtape.com/
posted by S at 2:43 PM on March 26, 2008
If they set up a licensing agreement (like Songza says they have), they'd be saved.
posted by Rex at 3:44 PM on March 26, 2008
Anybody else having difficulties getting this thing to work? I was able to play Rex's this morning, but this afternoon, I'm having problems with it. Bummed.
posted by stevemarsh at 4:29 PM on March 26, 2008
Yeah, it's been down for an hour or so.
posted by Rex at 4:31 PM on March 26, 2008
Back to work then. :(
posted by stevemarsh at 4:33 PM on March 26, 2008
they're storing a copy of your mp3 on Amazon S3 which you can get the url to by looking at your headers when you click on a track.
Rex's Stevie Wonder:
http://muxtape.s3.amazonaws.com/songs/33e96a69fde2a61db0a7e8ce5aa2f631?PLEASE=DO_NOT_STEAL_MUSIC&AWSAccessKeyId=1R7VFFT45XS0N28M1K02&Expires=1206584074&Signature=9noio9l7/Vq0/x5lIFNC55nfyIg=
but they put "DO NOT STEAL MUSIC" in the url, so um yeah.. I won't then.
posted by rico at 6:13 PM on March 26, 2008
I give 'em three weeks before the cease & desist. Damn cool, tho.
posted by Cory at 9:31 PM on March 26, 2008
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