Muxtape officially dead, sort of.
The much troubled music sharing service Muxtape is officially dead, at least in its original incarnation, however the site will return with a new model focusing on independent music.
Muxtape originally shut its main music sharing service in August, alluding to issues with the RIAA and music licensing. The RIAA later confirmed that they considered the Muxtape model illegal.
In an extremely long post on Muxtape, founder Justin Ouellette walks through the story so far from his perspective, then eventually gets to the new direction Muxtape will be taking
“Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.”
Kudos for Ouellette for willing to try something new, however services for indie bands aren’t exactly thin on the ground, so although he may have some street cred with the Muxtape brand, it will be a hard ask to build a successful business in this space.
(in part via Centernetworks)
