Easily Share your Mixtapes with Muxtape

Muxtape headerMuxtape launched a little over a week ago and quickly exploded all over the blogosphere. Like a lot of people, I signed up and became instantly addicted. Just 2 days after its launch, Muxtape had to beef up its servers to handle the surge in traffic with around 5,000 people signing up per day according to Justin Ouellette, Muxtape’s creator.

Muxtape allows you to upload up to 12 MP3′s, organize them, and share them via a personalized URL that streams the flash-embedded music. Like the name implies, it’s like sharing a mix-tape with a friend. Those of us that grew up in the 80′s and early 90′s know the significance of a mix-tape. It’s that painstaking process of picking out the best 12 tracks that gives Muxtape that personal edge that most music sharing sites are missing.

Muxtape logged in

Perhaps the main difference is how incredibly simple it is. Customization is basic with your username serving as your personal URL and your desired color, in hexadecimal value, for your muxtape’s color bar. Once the MP3′s are uploaded, organizing them is as simple as drag and drop. At that point you’re ready to start handing out the URL!

Muxtape Mp3 Organization

Playback is done via an embedded online flash player that can be controlled using the return key for playback and the left-right arrow keys for moving within the playlist. You also have the option of adding muxtapes to your favorites list which is only viewable from your own login page. If you really like a specific muxtape you can also subscribe to its feed or just bookmark it. It’s that easy!

Muxtape Playback

The legality of the site is definitely a concern for some people, as with any new form of music sharing. With Anywhere.fm, Hypster.com, and the slew of other mp3 uploading/music sharing sites out there, Muxtape appears to be most subdued thus making it less of a legal target. Even when compared to alternative services like Mixwit, Muxtape seems to be on a better ground. Muxtape is going to great measures to ensure that the uploaded tracks cannot be downloaded. The open source flash player plays link referrals and that linked file expires in 2 seconds making it difficult to find the file name and download it.

While Muxtape is very basic and devoid of any “real” features this is what sets it apart. For those of us who don’t want new music suggestions, to share our whole libaries, or be forced to share music in a social networking environment this site is a godsend. It’s biggest feature is that it has no features except the personalization we inject into it by painstakingly selecting our 12 perfect tracks.

(By) Written by Renee Valdez, A dot com junkie music lover and frequent blogger at Shopwiki’s Overlooked, a blog showcasing overlooked products from Shopwiki’s webcrawlers.

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Renee Valdez

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  • designer_c

    Yes, you hit on the major factors that have made/ are making Muxtape so appealing. The basic design principle of “less is more”, and the no strings attached factor. Muxtape is music for music’s sake and nothing else.

  • Bekah

    It will be interesting to see how the legality of this practice pans out. Remember that the old school, physically tangible mix tape cassette was technically illegal. That never stopped us because we knew that nobody was going to come to our house and bust us making or distributing them.

    But in this emerging industry we have DRM and laws such as the Performance Act of 2007 to worry about. Lucky for the users of this site, any sort of legal action will surely be taken against Mr. Ouellette, not Riotgrrrl or Yourmoms.

    Cool concept though, designed with the KISS principle in mind. The simplicity is surely what allowed it to explode onto the scene last week.

  • designer_c

    The mixtape only becomes illegal when you pass it on to someone other than the purchaser of the license. This is where the legal issues come into play for Muxtape. Making a mixtape for your own personal use is completely within your legal right as a license holder.

  • Hana

    I love this concept, immensely. The simplicity and speed makes it great for quick fixes and sharing of music!

  • LaurenceJohn

    This is actually a really good idea. I will have to try it out.

    I agree, I just usually cant be bothered signing up to the latest sharing site. All that fuss over setting up a new profile, photos, music etc etc, then finding your friends or getting them to join. I love how simple this is.

    • http://blog.shopwiki.com Renee

      Exactly! I think that’s what Still Rob G (below) failed to realize. I really think the goal is to remain as content poor as possible. At least I’m hoping so.

  • http://www.imeem.com Still Rob G

    So I guess nobody here has heard of imeem.com?

    They were doing the same thing 2 years ago, then they got sued…..

    And then they negotiated a deal and they’re still alive – right now *everything* you can do on muxtape you can already do on imeem.com – imeem is youtube for music – upload your favorite music so other people can listen, make playlists of these tunes and share them, borrow tunes from other people for your mixes, post tracks and playlists to your blogs.

    Unlike muxtape it’s not going to get hit with the legal banhammer, it’s already gone through that and the site just make muxtape look particularly feature and content poor in comparison

    • http://blog.shopwiki.com Renee

      imeem has that whole social network aspect to it. Muxtape is stupid simple. They weren’t trying to appear feature and content rich. It is what it is. We’ll see what happens with its legality but I’m most will hope it sticks around.

  • Still Rob G

    True, it is much simpler than imeem, I can understand that appeal. But it’s not like imeem forces you to use it like a social site, any more than the social features are required to use youtube.

    I really found it bizarre you didn’t even mention imeem when talking about music sharing, it’s by far the most popular site in the field. Apparently it was created by all the engineers who were laid off from the old napster before roxio bought the the napster brand.