muxtape posts

Hype Machine + Muxtape = HypeTape

by Jay Hathaway Apr 29th 2009

HypeTape is a new site that combines the simple streaming-playlist abilities of the old MuxTape with the music discovery powers of The Hype Machine. In case you're not familiar, The Hype Machine indexes posts from top music blogs, allowing you to find and read about new music with ease. Although HypeTape doesn't actually use Hype Machine search results, and isn't affiliated with either Muxtape or Hype Machine, the name is a convenient shorthand to describe what it does: it lets you make playlists out of songs uploaded by Mp3 bloggers.

Most of the basic features you'd expect are there: you can rereorder your playlists, add songs from other people's list, and rename your lists and tracks. What you won't find is the ability to download any of the audio files in your playlist. That's no big deal if you're used to the original Muxtape and its various offspring, though, and it also covers the developers' butts (to some extent) in case of takedown notices.

Tags: hype-machine, hypetape, music, muxtape, playlist

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Utilities, web 2.0, Web

Mixtape.me is the latest, greatest mp3 playlist site

by Jay Hathaway Mar 25th 2009

I've lost count of the times new audio playlist sites have popped up and been compared to the heyday of Muxtape. Comparisons are inevitable, though, when we talk about the latest -- and possibly the greatest -- in a long chain of mixtape sites that never quite seem to catch on: Mixtape.me. It grabs music from around the web, notably from Seeqpod, and does a great job of letting you make and browse playlists in an environment reminiscent of desktop music players.

You don't need an account to create a Quick Playlist on mixtape.me. You can just start adding tracks from searches and other people's playlists. Registering an account lets you add (but not upload) mp3s and save your playlists. There are also a lot of extra touches, like grabbing song info, lyrics and album artwork automatically. You can also share your playlists easily, even with friends who aren't signed up with Mixtape.me.

Tags: mixtape, mixtape.me, mp3, music, muxtape, playlist, seeqpod

Filed under: Audio, Social Software, web 2.0, Web

Ffffoundtape is the new Muxtape, Ffffound-style

by Jay Hathaway Mar 5th 2009

The photo-bookmarking and discovery site Ffffound still has of the most sought-after invitations online, and it's been around for quite a while. Now there's a sister-site called Ffffoundtape that's trying to apply the Ffffound approach in the world of mp3s. To add an mp3 to Fffoundtape, you can either enter its URL at the site or grab a bookmarklet and click it when your browser is open to an mp3 file.

So far, most of the stuff shared looks to be from popular Mp3 blogs like the ones indexed by The Hype Machine. The thriving mp3-blogger community gives Ffffoundtape a strong base to work from, and since there's no searching, uploading or downloading, it might stick around longer than its predecessors, like Muxtape and Favtape. It's still up to the sites hosting the mp3s to take them down in a reasonable amount of time, so Ffffoundtape should be in the clear. It isn't the easiest thing to use, though. The bookmarklet didn't work on the first try, and you have to enter the song information by hand regardless of whether you use the bookmarklet method or paste the link.

Tags: ffffound, ffffoundtape, mp3, music, music-blogs, muxtape, playlist

Filed under: Audio, web 2.0, Web

Muxtape is back, with a little help from some friends

by Jay Hathaway Jan 28th 2009

I have fond memories of Muxtape, which briefly reigned last year as the online music sharing method of choice for hipsters everywhere. Well, Muxtape is finally back, after shutting down for a while due to problems landing an affordable licensing deal for the music that was getting passed around on the service. It's a different kind of service now, although the interface looks the same. Now bands can sign up to add their songs to the site's library, and anybody can make a mixtape out of what's available.

Yes, this sounds a lot lamer than the old Muxtape, at first blush. It's not that bleak, though, as the first dozen or so artists helping to kick off the new service rock pretty hard. Perhaps you've heard of Of Montreal? Amanda Palmer? How about the golden boy of mashups, Girl Talk? Well, they're on the new Muxtape, and the future looks bright for Internet indie kids if the service keeps growing in that direction.

Tags: audio, mixtape, music, muxtape, playlist, sharing

Filed under: Audio, Utilities, web 2.0

Opentape: Open source mixtapes? That's so indie.

by Jay Hathaway Aug 27th 2008

If you're a fan of the breakout mixtape-sharing service Muxtape, you've probably noticed that they've been down for a while, dealing with a complaint from the RIAA. Who knows how long that could take, or whether they're even going to be back up at all? What's a mixtape lover to do? Well, some ingenious Muxtape fans have cooked up an open source solution for hosting your own mixes, using an admittedly Muxtape-inspired interface.

It's called OpenTape, and you can host it easily on your own server, if you're running Apache and PHP5 (or some other servers the site doesn't specify, so give it a try for yourself if you're not sure.) There's a demo OpenTape up, and it does work almost exactly like Muxtape, although most of the features have been rewritten. The only code that's directly left over from Muxtape is the song reordering tool, and OpenTape is looking for someone to rewrite that, too. Long story short, this is a slick way to share music on your own site. Give it a look.

Tags: audio, mixtape, music, muxtape, OpenTape, sharing

Filed under: Audio, Web services, web 2.0

Favtape: On-demand music playlist pulled from Last.fm, Pandora profiles

by Brad Linder Jul 22nd 2008

Online music sites Pandora and Last.fm do a great job of providing you with streaming music you might like based on your listening history. But what they don't do a great job of us letting you listen to any song you want at any time. That's because music labels actually want you to do things like you know, go out and buy the songs.

But in this new information age, practically any song you could ever want to hear has been uploaded to one web site or another. All you need to know is how to use search engines like Google to find them. And that's where music search engines/players like SeeqPod come in. The site doesn't actually host any audio, it just provides the means to play audio hosted on other sites. So while the music may kind of sort of be illegally hosted, SeeqPod isn't violating any laws.

Favtape combines some of the best features of Seedpod and Pandora and Last.fm, with a whole lot of muxtape thrown in for good measure. Here's how it works. You visit Favtape.com, enter your Pandora user profile or your Last.fm username and Favtape will find your favorites and/or bookmarks. It will then create a playlist out of those songs by tracking down the music from other sources online.

The upshot is that you should get a playlist with up to 10 songs that you've already said you like, and you can hit the play button to listen at any time without any of the limiations imposed by Pandora or Last.fm. The downside is that sometimes Favtape will think it found your song when in fact it found another song with a similar file name. See that BNL link above? Yeah, when we clicked play we got some song we'd never heard before and didn't particularly much care for.

[via TechCrunch]

Tags: favtape, last.fm, music, muxtape, pandora, seeqpod

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Search, web 2.0

MuxFind: Music search engine for Muxtape

by Brad Linder May 27th 2008

Muxtape is a great site for creating web-based "mix tapes" which you can share with your friends. Just upload a few songs, put them in order, and send the link to your friends, family members, and enemies. Anyone can listen to your songs, but there's no (easy) way to download the music. There's just one problem: There's no way to search Muxtapes, which seriously limits the site's utility.

Enter MuxFind, a search engine for Muxtape. Just enter an artist, song title, or Muxtape user name and MuxFind will direct you to any pages that match your query. Muxfind is a great way to find not just individual songs, but other music you might like. After all, if you're a big Poi Dog Pondering fan, there's a good chance other users who uploaded Poi Dog music will have other songs you might like.

Update: The site has been updated since this post was written so that you can now only search by Muxtape, not by song or artist. This makes both Muxfind and Muxtape a whole lot less useful as far as we're concerned. But the change might (or might not) help keep the sites lawsuit free (for now).

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: music, muxfind, muxtape

Filed under: Audio, Security, web 2.0

Muxtape mucked up: who hacked it?

by Jay Hathaway May 21st 2008

Muxtape, the popular online mixtape service we wrote about earlier this year, appears to have been hacked today. Every song on every Muxtape has been replaced by, "Aim (with Stephen Jones) - Good Disease [Babybird does a Prince thing]." Users can't delete the track from their mixes, and (in our professional opinions) the song isn't even very good.

An update was just posted to the Muxtape blog. No details yet, but they know about the problem and have taken the site down temporarily to fix it.: "This afternoon, someone gained access to our server and caused some problems. We are investigating and will have more information soon. I've taken the site down temporarily as a precaution. Thanks for your understanding, watch this space for an update."

On the plus side for Muxtape, the service has only gotten better since its initial launch. It's now playable from iPhones, and plenty of sites have popped up to catalog the best and most interesting Muxtapes. The site is down right now, presumably being fixed, and we will update this post as we get more information on the battle between Muxtape and Babybird's Prince thing. Is this a publicity stunt by the band, or just a prank?

UPDATE: Muxtape is now saying that this may have been a result of a database problem and not any kind of breakin, but the cause is still undetermined. The site should be back up by tomorrow, and everyone's mixes were probably backed up and should be restored.

Tags: babybird, hacked, hacking, muxtape, prank, publicity stunt, PublicityStunt, stephen jones, StephenJones

Filed under: Audio, Social Software

Simple mixtape sharing with Muxtape

by Jay Hathaway Mar 26th 2008

New York City hipsters have struck again, bringing quick and easy mixtape sharing to the 'net at Muxtape.com. The site was built by Justin Ouellette, and early mixes have been uploaded by Jakob Lodwick (of Vimeo) and Patrick Moberg (of nygirlofmydreams.com fame). Muxtape is easy as pie: upload songs in mp3 format, drag and drop to organize, send the link to your friends.

Muxtapes hold up to 12 songs in a nice minimal layout (LARGE TYPE! CLICK TO PLAY! CLICK AGAIN TO STOP!). You can't download songs directly from other people's Muxtapes, which keeps the focus on finding good new artists to support. Justin says RSS feeds and m4a support are already in the works, so Muxtape should just keep getting easier.

Tags: audio, music, muxtape, sharing

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