Well *cough,* not that anyone would do that, but Mixwit is a site where you could if you wanted to theoretically speaking, do something kind of, sort of, like that, if you were into that type of thing, which you're definitely probably not.

Making a mix tape with Mixwit is super easy. You can upload your own artwork for the tape skin, search for songs online and drag and drop them on the playlist you're creating, share by publishing it on Mixwit or even embedding on your blog or website. It's absolutely free too. We think you'll love it.

Quintessential Music Player aims to be your one-and-only digital music jukebox and library. With its small footprint, skinnable interface, plug-in architecture, and wealth of support for all digital media formats, Quintessential is quite a suitor.

Here are the highlights:

Playback
Quintessential supports a massive variety of popular audio and video file types, including mp3, mp3 PRO, Ogg Vorbis, WMA , CD, ASX, AU, and much more

Ripping and Encoding
You can convert your CD audio or existing media files into any digital audio format, including Ogg Vorbis, LAME, WMA, etc...

Gracenote CDDB Support
The Quintessential Player uses the Gracenote CDDB Music Recognition Service to fill in artist, album and song info. But if you really want to get detailed, you can expand the incoming data to include up to 30 fields, such as track-level songwriting, production, playing credits, release date, label, genre, and more.

Extensible, open architecture
Quintessential is a small package; the developers wanted it that way. Once Quintessential is installed, however, you can customize and add on to the player to your heart's content. Add visualizers, custom skins, language packs, specific audio encoders (such as LAME), library/playlist functions, all available as free plug-ins from the Quintessential website.

Quintessential Player is a free download for Microsoft Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, and Vista. Build 120, just released, adds some bug fixes and new plugins.

Amarok has just released a preview of its new version 2, codenamed "Kutie." In case you didn't know, Amarok is the free music player for Linux and Unix, with support for album art, lyrics, and Wikipedia and last.fm integration.

A word of warning: this is a very early release and a technical preview only (it's called a pre-alpha release; if you've ever wondered what came before alpha, this is your chance to find out). The developers admit that many things are broken or not feature complete, though it does play music; which is, upon deeper reflection, a nice thing to have in a music player.

So why release such an early version? Call it an inspiration, a call to arms. They need developers and artists to help finish Amarok 2.0. If you hear that siren song, you can join them in their IRC channel #amarok on freenode or let them know via email.

The other day we told you about WinVibe, a new free music player for Windows Mobile devices. I started off thinking I was going to write a roundup of all the other music players for this week's Mobile Minute. But after thinking about it for a while, it occurred to me that there are just so many great free programs available that there's almost no reason to pay for music software.

That said, if you're interested in some advanced features, by all means check out Conduits Pocket Player, 40th Floor's iPlay, Nero Mobile, and PocketMind's Pocket Music. But the following programs will perform most of the same functions, and in some cases, even more.

Avvenu Music Player is an app that allows you to keep your Apple iTunes music with you wherever you go, whether it's on a different PC, Mac or laptop while you are out and about, or even a friend's computer. This music player even works with a Windows Mobile 5 smartphone. The way it works is that playlists are streamed from your home computer (which must be a PC) where you have the Aveenu Music Player running from. You can choose which friends you want to share playlists with and stream them your library instantly, or access it over the internet and play them. Once installed, the service does chug a bit if you have a large library. You can also share files and photos through the service. So if you work from multiple locations, or want to transfer files from home to work, this might be something to try out as well. The free music sharing portion only allows for 250 songs to be shared. When playlists are chosen, the songs are uploaded to Avvenu's servers for streaming playback. When they have all been streamed, you don't have to leave your main computer up and running. This is most likely why my player seemed to be chugging. But there was no notification that files were being uploaded. This seems like a little security threat, and I'm not sure how the record execs would feel about this as well. What does Avvenu do with the music when it's uploaded? Although it seemed rather slow for me, and the music player locked up at times. The Avvenu Music Player is still in beta, so these small bugs should be expected every once and a while. As for the copying of my music data to their servers without notification... I didn't like that very much.

TechCrunch and Go2web2 also share their thoughts on the player.

Yahoo!'s corporate blog, Yodel Anecdotal, announced the availability of a new Yahoo! Music video player. This is a beta release and they have put up a slick user feedback mechanism for you to use in telling them how to make it better and what features rock (pardon the pun).

From the well-prepared tutorial the new features are:

• Video Lineup: control the videos you want to watch! Create a customized video lineup, arrange and reorganize videos, monitor upcoming selections, and create your own session playlist.
• Easy video search: from within the video player, instantly find videos by searching for your favorite artists or video titles.
• Browse by category: get customized recommendations based on your video ratings, or choose from recommendations by category-Top 100, exclusive Nissan Live Sets, videos you've recently watched, and more!
• All new design: everything at your fingertips! Enhanced video player controls, simplified video search, and easier ways to browse content-all in one place, within one interface.
• Mac Compatible: now available for Macintosh OS X.

Google and Mozilla know how to push their software out to the masses. People love their software, and do pretty much anything to get it out there, either through word of mouth, or through distribution deals with the likes of Dell and other major players in the technology industry.

Google and Mozilla have teamed with RealNetworks to distribute their popular software even further. For the past few years Google has already had a partnership with Real for software distribution. Now another multi-year deal was recently struck between the three companies, giving users the option of downloading and installing Firefox, and the Google Toolbar when they are downloading RealPlayer. Hooray for Google and Mozilla! More exposure for these killer applications.

Yahoo! Music Engine is now called Yahoo! Music Jukebox (haven't I heard that name before?). This name change coincides with the roll out of new features and a premium "Plus" version.

According to the press release, Yahoo! Music Jukebox will be enhanced with:

• New Audio Equalizer: A new 5-band equalizer allows users to adjust the sound of their favorite music in a convenient fashion.
• Usability Enhancements: An overall new look of Yahoo! MusicJukebox has made key functions more accessible through consistent right click and tick menus. Users can quickly play a selection of an artist's top tracks with just one click. The improved application makes moving the Yahoo! Music catalog - to a users' music collection - to Messenger Music and back again for a seamless experience.