Muxtape launched with a lot of hype a few months ago – if you’re into music or have friends who are, you’ve probably been sent a link to one at some point (for good measure, here’s mine).
For those who’ve not come across it yet, it’s a website that allows you to upload a 12 song mixtape and easily share it with the world.
Starting with a golden idea, Muxtape works because of impeccable design and execution. It’s fueled by a beautiful and elegant interface, which feels both old school and web2.0 at the same time. It’s so fluid and cool in fact, that you immediately want to share it with people.
I also love the commitment to the simple idea of sharing digital mixtapes. This is evidenced by the lack of a search function. I think this is brilliant.
Letting you search for individual songs would have certainly pissed off record companies A LOT and would have betrayed the sanctity of the mixtape (watch) which is what gives it street cred in the first place.
Now for some things you might not have know:
Muxtape has built in iPhone functionality…
And can be combined with Fluid to create a really cool music jukebox…
If you’re interested in how to do this, grab your mac and check out this video from Internet Jogging:
Also, there’s mixwit – not quite as cool but a site that has some potential.
UPDATE: Here’s an interview with Muxtape founder, Justin Ouellette
Also there’s imeem.com which launched in 2004, and lets users do all this.
It does have a search function, and no limits on how much you can upload and share. It did piss off record companies, but, the record business needs cash so instead of going for the kill they made deals and now imeem is essentially youtube for music.
Look hard at imeem, because many of the things that have happened at imeem will have to happen to muxtape, it’ll have to make deals, block content, ban users and of course pay for the whole thing by covering the site with ads.
So, give some credit to imeem for pioneering the online mixtape.