Citrus Fortress

muxtape

Looks like a preview of the new muxtape.com is up, and while it has a certain aesthetic appeal, I’m not quite sure what niche it’s trying to fill. I mean, obviously it’d like to be what myspace has been in the past — a turnkey online presence for artists, simple to use and appealing to consumers. But unlike a site like thesixtyone.com (which I love, and will profile soon), there seem to be no music discovery features, no community features, and it’s unclear how the current browsing-based paradigm (there are currently just 12 artists in the preview, and a “next”/turn-the-page button at the top right of each page) will upscale to handle tens of thousands of artists uploading content (or how they will prevent users from masquerading as artists and uploading unauthorized content, but that’s a matter for another day.) That said, muxtape has retained much of the elegance of its former incarnation, and the user experience it provides is a pleasing one for the most part. (Though I’d love for the music player to be persistent across pages, like thesixtyone.com’s, so browsing around didn’t constantly interrupt the listening experience.) And, it is early days — there’s no need to rush to judgment. I’m wishing the muxtape dudes the best of luck — they’ve showed before that they “get it,” and I wouldn’t want to write them off prematurely.

thesixtyone

That said, I’d sure like a simple way to make and share mixes with people again. Mixes have always been such an important music discovery vector, one of the earliest “if you like this, you might also like that” devices. (Not to mention a critical “i like you, i hope you like me” device.) I can’t see how any artist would object to being included in a mix/mux — it could only lead to greater awareness, a larger fanbase, and ultimately, increased revenue. Sure there’s a service like Mixaloo, but that always felt way too commerce-oriented to me — more about buying someone songs rather than sharing with them something that’s dear to you. Plus, it always seemed to have only about half of what I wanted it to have. Alternately, it would be trivial for thesixtyone.com to spin off their favorites list functionality into a mix feature, whereby a user could maintain (in essence) multiple favorites lists. Since all the content on thesixtyone is artist-uploaded (that’s the idea, anyway, and it seems to be pretty well-enforced), such a mix building service wouldn’t run afoul of the RIAA. Something to think about, James/Sam/Ben? But the problem there, again, is one of song availability. I want to be able to:

• Make a mix of songs I own
• Give that mix a title and some cover art, and maybe some liner notes
• Send it to someone directly, or share it via a widget on my blog or profile

On the other end, the recipient should be able to listen to it in what ever way she likes (e.g. import it into itunes, put it on a portable music player, burn a CD.)

Right now my only option for doing that is to zip up all the files and share them on a large file-sharing service like sendspace. But that’s a dead-end, a terrible waste of a great opportunity to gain knowledge and audience.  What if there were instead a structured system that allowed artist participation (via ad-based rev share, perhaps) and stats tracking? Gave artists the ability to program their contribution, releasing music on a regular basis and getting promotion for it on some sort of hub page? To target fans of similar music with for-barter ad credits? How about music recommendation/discovery features? All these additions would be of immense value to artists, and also to music fans, who are always ravenously searching for new great stuff. Thesixtyone.com is probably our best hope here, but would need to get closer to ubiquitous artist participation (a pipe dream?) for it to really work.

In the meantime, maybe I should just turn off the computer, dust off the old Onkyo, and embrace the warm hiss of the ferromagnetic miracle.

Filed under:
digital, music, musings by Tony Zito