Easily Share your Mixtapes with Muxtape

Muxtape 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.

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!

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!

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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