For musicians and music fans who want music sites free of pop-up dating service ads, MUXTAPE is a strong alternative to MySpace. Personally, I like the clean interface and the focus on select imagery and music. The interface requires every design to work within their three panel grid system, which gives a calming unity of design to the whole affair (and eliminates the fear of it crashing your web browser). The above image is the BHP version of a MUXTAPE site. For others and some pretty interesting music: 

Bless Yourself: HERE. 

As an extension on the Spotify debate that I posted about previously, Interesting angle from Steve Lawson on Spotify, to summarize he sees it that regardless of wheter he makes money or not from spotify, his fans are there and he needs to be where they are. And he can use spotify to boost other areas, like shows and such.

I’ll just paste my comment to save time and avoid repetition. Also, I highly recommend checking him out, especially Grace and Gratitude.

Also, just discovered Spotify does have an iPhone app.

“

It’s been frustrating. Back in June, The New Yorker published an intimate short on music that soldiers enjoy jamming to while jacking themselves up for war, especially effective when “motivation is down.” It’s a good find, one that I’ve been wanting for a long time to re-post with supplementary audio, without which you’d have been deprived of all synergy, much like burger without cheese, Omar Little without gay, defeating the whole point of the post really. However, ever since Muxtape.com shut down, it’s been tough finding good embeddable music players. FavTape is closed. MixWit’s down. OpenTape requires a more enterprising user. 8tracks promised me seamless embed codes, which turned out entirely to be a lie. Ugh. But at least the player works on its site. So here we go: I present to you New Yorker’s “Blam!” complete with a soundtrack of the very songs covered by the article. (Holy shit! Just writing that makes me so jazzed!) You are to do the following, for maximal enjoyment:

1. play mix, in separate window/tab;
2. read article, slowly. (at a minimum, make it past Slayer’s Jihad.)

The New Yorker, Lauren Collins, June 29, 2009:

In the winter of 2004, Jonathan Pieslak, a composer and an associate professor of music at City College, was researching a paper on heavy metal when he stumbled on a Web site devoted to the death-metal band Slayer. (Their songs include “The Antichrist,” “Mandatory Suicide,” and one, written from the perspective of a terrorist, called “Jihad”: “Fuck your God erase his name /A lady weeps insane with sorrow.”) On the site, a fan had written that, during the Gulf War, the band received forty per cent of its fan mail from soldiers in the Middle East. The claim turned out to be an exaggeration, but Pieslak became interested. In April, Indiana University Press published his book “Sound Targets: American Soldiers and Music in the Iraq War,” which examines the role of music in military recruiting, combat, interrogations, and morale, and explains many things about Slayer’s appeal.

First of all: listening to heavy metal, with its double-pedal bass drums and tremolo-style guitars, Pieslak writes, is a good way to prepare mentally for a mission, because it “sounds considerably like the consistent discharge of bullets fired from an automatic gun.” Colby Buzzell, an M240 Bravo machine gunner who did a yearlong tour in Iraq, told Pieslak, “I’d listen to Slayer to get all into it.” Once, Buzzell said, a guy on his patrol rigged up his MP3 player to a Humvee, and the patrol blasted theme songs from old movies—a modern-day drum-and-fife brigade. He said, “Sometimes your motivation is down and you’re like, ‘I don’t want to play soldier today.’ . . . But then you hear ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ theme song and you’re like, ‘Fuck yeah, hell yeah, I’ll go out on a mission today.’ ” For some in the Fourth Infantry Division, Lil Jon’s “I Don’t Give a Fuck” was an anthem—soldiers called it their “getting crunked” song, and they would chant its refrain until they were ready to leave the base.

At the Borders store in the Time Warner Center on a recent afternoon, Pieslak said that in another unit “Metallica was the group of choice. Then, when they got to Falluja, it switched to ‘Go to Sleep,’ by Eminem: ‘Die, motherfucker, die! / Unh, time’s up, bitch, close ya eyes.’ ” Pieslak, wearing Pumas, a T-shirt, and camouflage cargo shorts (no significance—just “what was clean”), had agreed to poke around the music section. Passing Classic Crooners, New Age, and Jazz (“You’re probably not going to see too many guys over there with George Winston CDs,” he said), he led the way to Rock, where he riffled through the “D”s. Dropkick Murphys. Drowning Pool. “Their song ‘Bodies’ is interesting,” he said, pulling out a CD that featured a woman holding a hand across her face, the word “SINNER” written across her knuckles. “It kept popping up.” Soldiers would use it both to get pumped up for battle and “to induce irritation and frustration among detainees.” (The detainees, apparently, preferred ’N Sync and Michael Jackson.) Pieslak said that a group of soldiers had made a music video in which they set their own footage and photographs to the song. They called it “Taliban Bodies.” A pair of Arkansas National Guardsmen, Pieslak writes, recorded an album in Iraq. One track, with apologies to Jimmy Buffett, was called “Mortaritaville”: “Wasted away again in Baghdad / One weekend a month, yeah, my ass / I’d like to kick my recruiter straight square in the teeth / But I know, ‘It’s my own damn fault.’ ”

Music, Pieslak writes, has always been a part of the military experience, from training cadences (“Soldier, Soldier Have You Heard”) to battle cries (Joshua’s trumpets, “Hakkaa päälle”) and “thunder runs,” in which troops descend in force upon a given area (in Baghdad, one team blasted Wagner, in homage to “Apocalypse Now”). In the book’s fourth chapter, “Music as a Psychological Tactic,” Pieslak examines a “sonic battle” between American troops—who blasted “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses, and “Hell’s Bells,” by AC/DC—and Iraqi mullahs, who tried to drown out the metal with chants of “Allahu Akbar” and Arabic music. Standing near the “J”s, he said, “Plato thought that different musical scales could have different effects on the human condition. We tend to have a misconception about music—that it is this thing that delights the senses, elevates the spirit. While I like that idea, it is only part of what music has been.”

Hacía tiempo que no escribía una entrada sobre música, pero mi mosqueo me ha animado a hacerlo (y mucho).

Muxtape nació como un sitio donde poder crear nuestras propias “cintas de cassette” virtuales. Resultaba divertido escoger las canciones de una lista (o subirlas desde nuestros propios archivos), ordenarlas, y luego regalarle el link a nuestra gente para que pudiese disfrutar de nuestra selección.
Regalé algunas muxtapes a mis amigos: con la selección de mis temas favoritos, para alegrarles el día o como un simple detalle; porque me apetecía.
Luego, la RIAA los denunció y tuvieron que cerrar la página durante algún tiempo.

Hoy me apeteció regalar una de aquellas “cintas de música”. Así que me dirigí a la web de muxtape, para ver cómo se había resuelto el tema con la RIAA. Al parecer han decidido enfocarlo a bandas de música. Cada banda se crea su propia página (al estilo myspace, pero a priori con menos opciones de customización) y sube sus temas. Tú puedes crear tu cinta a partir de las bandas que han subido sus canciones (y por lo tanto, que han dado permiso para su utilización por medio de esa herramienta). No me considero una persona muy enterada de las últimas tendencias musicales (hago lo que puedo), pero creo que vi 3 letras (las bandas vienen ordenadas alfabéticamente) en el buscador de bandas y de la gran lista no me sonaba ningún nombre 

Tras buscar en google acerca de si a alguien se le había encendido la bombilla y habían decidido seguir la estela del muxtape de los comienzos, encontré Opentape ( una herramienta que permite que todo el mundo pueda montarse su versión de muxtape en su servidor); que intentaré probar en cuanto pueda. Además, encontré también Hypetape, que si bien parece un digno sucesor; a mi no me valdrá mientras no tenga entre sus archivos a grupos españoles (lleva media hora intentado buscarme alguna canción de Los Planetas…).

En fin, después de esto, creo que sólo me queda subir mis “cintas” a un archivo comprimido en megaupload, grabar un CD o desempolvar el radiocassette.

Hey, remember Muxtape? If not, quickly: in its first incarnation, Mixtape was a muxtape service – no, wait, other way round – created by Justin Ouellette that was popular among tech-y bloggers and the Tumblr-sphere.  It got shut down by U.S. record labels before it had a chance to develop a business model but, after going on hiatus, it rose, all phoenix-like, to be a site for bands to preview and promote their work.

Reaction to the Muxtape’s reincarnation was muted at best. Most complained that if offered little in comparison to other sites: there were no bios, no videos, no links; just music. But why am I thinking about Muxtape today?

Well, there was a comment on The Awl yesterday about Lady GaGa that reminded me of my reactions to Muxtape’s rebirth. The connection is a bit circuitous, so bear with me. First, here’s the comment, in response to Alex Balk’s continued bewilderment at Lady GaGa’s entire shtick:

She’s a pop star who seems to be fully aware of the fact that being a pop star right now is all about image and also seems to be fully in control of that image, to the point where almost all we see of her is performance. In an age where you can find a ton of celebrities on Twitter being accessible and human, god help us, she’s an old-fashioned enigmatic famous person. And she’s managed this without becoming a sex symbol (sort of) and while displaying actual singing and songwriting talent.

So, wtf does this have to do with Muxtape? Well, I think Muxtape is the Lady GaGa of music services.

Lady GaGa effaces her ‘own, personal identity’ in order to promote the ‘unreal’ one, sidestepping the need to be ‘authentic’ and ‘real’ by embracing precisely the kind of falsity and image that others resist. This, I would say, characterises not just modern fame, but fame in general. Fame is about the projection of the image-of-a-person into the public space and into our consciousness. It’s about surface, it’s about ideas, it’s about desire – but what it’s not about is ‘an actual person’. It’s about what the image of that person means as a sign within a given cultural context. And once you’re okay with that, pop music is a fucking riot and pretty great.

Muxtape does something similar – but definitely not the same. It effaces image and brand almost entirely in favour of coloured blocks on a screen with text in them (and fine, a logo or photo or something). By maintaining this generally blank, neutral aesthetic, Muxtape, in a way that is far less naive than it sounds, is ‘about the music, man’.

After all, there is no attempt to produce an aura of a band, an image of something that has far more to do with the performance of identity than the performance of the music. To wit, Muxtape’s refusal to create an idea of a band (sorta’, almost) sidesteps the need for bands-as-brands. It’s not that escapes the kind of reductiveness or signifying of branding entirely; that would be too optimistic. But, consciously or not, it makes an effort, and that’s what I still think makes it kinda’ neat.

And so, both Muxtape and Lady GaGa erect a wall between a person or group of people and the representation of that identity in the public space. Lady GaGa embraces that representation to become the image, to her benefit. Muxtape effaces the representation in order to present the music with as little attachment to a culture of branding as possible.

We’re delighted to announce that we are now the first Irish band on Muxtape.
http://theminutes.muxtape.com/
Muxtape is a platform for bands

It’s currently a work in progress. When it’s done,

• bands will be able to sell downloads
• anyone will be able to make mixes of music on the site
• labels will be able to manage their bands in one place
• developers will be able to build on our API

The Minutes join the likes of Little Boots, Dan Deacon, Girl Talk and of Montreal. The band can also now invite other Irish bands on to Muxtape.

Hypetape describes itself, somewhat redundantly, as ‘the illegitimate lovechild of The Hype Machine and Muxtape.’ It scrapes the web for MP3s, and lets you put together playlists, which you can save and share. They don’t host any of the music (so they aren’t vulnerable to filesharing charges). It’s a neat idea, with a straightforward interface, but there’s one major problem: music posted to blogs is almost always ephemeral, whether by choice or necessity.  That means that the life expectancy of your playlists is shorter than a snowball in a supernova. I did a test search on British Sea Power and I think that the resultant songs were ordered chronologically (“Come Wander With Me” was at the top), but it would be useful to see a posting date, so you’d at least have a sense of when the best-by date would be.  What would make this a really compelling application, as far as I’m concerned, is if I could use Hypetape to pull together a mixtape, and then for it to automagically find and download the MP3s, and have them appear as a labeled playlist in iTunes. Ideally, it’d be coupled with a good music exploration or recommendation system, to make it easy to find artists that I didn’t already know about (if anyone is listening, I would also like a pony).

What do you think? What would you want to see in a playlist site?

[image: buy the t-shirt!]

MP3: British Sea Power – Come Wander With Me

A big thanks to Kate over at for me, for you for turning me on to Reggie Watts, with whom I am now completely captivated by. He combines looped vocals that he creates live on stage with a unique brand of improvised comedy – his show is one definitely not to be missed by comedy or music fans alike.

Reggie’s subjects range from ancient history, technology, magic, spirit elves, dragons, mythology and theology to pop culture. The music incorporates hip-hop, trip-hop, 80’s pop alternative, nu-metal and classical opera, and no two songs are ever the same. The best description I can give it is an ultra-unique form of beat-boxing.

Check out the video of Reggie’s performance from last week’s Jimmy Fallon show. It’s pretty amazing. Particularly because he seems like such an unassuming guy.

Check out more of Reggie Watts on Muxtape.

Descarga haciendo clic en la imágen.

Los Godínez invasores miran extrañados la desconfianza en todo dicho de los funcionarios públicos, pero han sido advertidos que entender de política terrestre es igual de útil que enumerarle a un perro los diferentes tipos de lechuga; así que sin ánimos intervencionistas le tienen preparada una compilación para quitarle las ganas de besar a su roña, quédese con ella pero admírela de lejitos.

Duración: 46minutos 35 segundos / 65.3 Mb
Canciones:

• Bulldog / Apagón en la ciudad
• Sui Géneris / Canción para mi muerte
• Bright Eyes / Old Soul Song (for the new world)
• David Bowie / Kingdome Come
• Chris Cornell / Preaching the end of the world
• Echo & the Bunnymen / My Kingdome
• Motörhead / Please don’t touch
  
• Grinderman / Honey Bee (let’s fly to Mars)
• Bon Savants / I am the atom bomb
• Everything but the girl / 25th December
• The Fairfield Four / Lonesome Valley
• The Noveltones (kid koala remix) / The Gonk
• Johnny Cash / If we never meet again

Arte: Folder para tu Pc / imprime, recorta y arma el empaque.
Descarga: 13 canciones para que mantenga la boca cerrada.

The Flaming Lips played a concert in Washington last Sunday, in honor of Earth Day.

I want to say that “Wayne Coyne demonstrated ‘green transportation’ via ‘ball-surfing on a crowd of people’,” but I just can’t make that joke.

What did you do for the planet today?

Did any other Earth Day related news occur in the indie-blogosphere?

Sidenote: Are MP3’s better for the planet then vinyl? (Sadly, yes).

Special Facts: Earth Day & 4:20 are in the same week. (How often could that happen?)

Unrelated: Carles made a Muxtape page, ugghhhh…

I discovered Muxtape a while ago, and what set it apart for me was simple uncluttered design and the quality of the music site relaunched with. So many fantastic bands! I’ve developed a few favourites: Vulture Realty, Adron, DM Smith and of Montreal. After having some problems with the RIAA when it first launched they’re back and they’ve moved to a different model.  The new(ish) model is: only bands who want (the privilege of having) their music on the site put it up now. So that means no more copyright infringement claims! They just recently announced that they’re ready to open up Muxtape up a bit and are letting the original bands the site launched with invite other bands, and it seems to be growing pretty fast. Every time I refresh the bands page a new band pops up.

Although at this point in time the site is still under construction, I am EXCITED by the product they are trying to create. A place where you can stream music free, create legal mixes, and then buy it if you so desire sounds like a fantastic mix! And the best thing is it won’t end up looking like the confused mess that is MySpace music! I’m awaiting with -somewhat- bated breath as I see how they organise the inevitable huge flood of bands. But you should definately check it out!

Quasi un anno fa, su consiglio di un’amica, navigando nella Rete alla ricerca di nuovi, accattivanti quanto innovativi siti, ho conosciuto Muxtape, una piattaforma che ha in brevissimo tempo scalato la classifica dei miei spazi della Rete preferiti. Il servizio era semplice quanto intuitivo: l’utente non registrato, visitando l’homepage, visualizzava tanti piccoli quadratini colorati con diversi nomi sui quali (la cui visualizzazione era gestita in maniera random, per cui ogni volta ne camparivano di diversi), cliccando, accedere a delle playlist suggerite in pieno stile web 2.0. La cosa che rendeva particolare il sito è che attraverso Muxtape si potevano ascoltare brani diversissimi, da tutto il mondo (ricordo con simpatia dei pezzi hardcore russi), spesso semisconosciuti o comunque non propriamente “mass-market”. L’iniziativa però, visto anche il successo con la quale la community è cresciuta (ovviamente anche il sottoscritto aveva fatto la sua indie-playlist), ha attirato ben presto le ire di etichette discografiche e varie associazioni statunitensi (una su tutte, la temutissima RIAA) che intravedevano nel servizio un mezzo per alimentare la pirateria e la diffusione di musica in maniera illegale, svincolata dai diritti che solitamente vincolano le tracce. Sono tornato oggi a vedere il sito e ho potuto leggere la lunga storia circa le disavventure di Justin, l’ideatore di Muxtape (il racconto mi ha un po’ ricordato il film Insider) e ho potuto leggere le novità della nuova versione ora in fase di test. Dalle prime indiscrezioni sembra che la nuova piattaforma potrà garantire come agli utenti di ascoltare nuova musica e agli artisti di pubblicare le loro tracce (creandosi dei profili con calendari, foto, commenti…). Spero davvero che il progetto possa proseguire, sono sempre alla ricerca di nuova buona musica.

I’ve just this minute discovered MixTape.me, a new music-based mashup (via ReadWriteWeb).

For those wondering, it’s a little bit like the now partially-defunct Muxtape, except far more flexible in its ability to create, manage and share playlists. It sits in your browser happily playing away, but the interface feels like a desktop application (like Spotify). In short, it’s very slick and seemingly has access to a large number of copyrighted tracks. As RWW puts it:

And the music.. where does the music come from? Good question.. the answer is, a lot of places; cloud storage, web sites, SeeqPod. In fact, the site is careful to keep that information behind the scenes. What you are left with is a clean, very desktop music player-like experience.

It’s in open beta and the main feature it’s missing for me is last.fm scrobbling integration. However, it wasn’t long before Spotify introduced this feature after they went into beta, so here’s hoping it might pop up at Mixtape.me soon!

How long until the RIAA pounce with their crack unit of highly trained copyright lawyers? Anyone’s guess. Until then, I suggest you enjoy it while it lasts.

By Jay Hathaway, Downloadsquad.com

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.

Guest blogger Scott writes:

On Monday, the NYT Freakonomics blog reported on the return of mix tape site Muxtape. While the blog entry has pictures and content links that give a sense of where Muxtape is going, there’s very little at the website itself right now, although the story of what Muxtape was, and how it got to where it is now, is interesting. The major change from the original Muxtape format is that, instead of anyone being able to upload songs and create mix tapes, only artists with licensing rights will be allowed to upload music. On its face, that makes this Myspace without the thirteen-year-old-who-just-learned-HTML design dynamic (which might be sufficient, actually).  But, for me at least, the important aspect is this: “The goal of Muxtape remains facilitating the discovery of new music, and anyone can still create a mix from the music available on the site.” (emphasis mine) In other words, while only those with legal authority can upload music (the charter members include Amanda Palmer, Girl Talk, Dan Deacon, and Of Montreal), a user-created mix tape can include any of the uploaded music. That’s a fairly straight-forward tipping point business model—once a critical volume of music is reached, the ability of Muxtape to reach new listeners has the potential to expand drastically.

Even as improvements in technology have greatly increased the ease with which music can be shared and distributed, the technology of what-the-database-thinks-you’ll-like has been a huge step back, for me. I’ve never been a big fan of Pandora and its ilk, and much prefer recommendations with the human touch. The Shuffle function on my iPod hasn’t seen use since the first two weeks I owned it. While I don’t always know what song I want to listen to at any given moment, I do know that randomization (even based on a seed/relational database or a playlist of things I know I like) does a very poor job. Mix tapes, on the other hand, follow a path that someone has laid out, and if that path passes through something I know I like, then there’s an excellent chance that there will be other steps in that path that appeal. Mix tapes and personal recommendations from people whose taste I understand are generally how I learn about new music, and although there are many options for the latter, the options on the Internet for the former haven’t been especially successful to date. So the return of Muxtape is welcome.

On a related topic, the Freakonomics blog entry also includes a link to an economics paper suggesting that television availability on the Internet increases total television program viewing, even though (as would be expected) it decreases television program viewing on television. The models are sufficiently different that it’s hard to claim that this argument is generalizable to music, but it might help to explain why Alec Baldwin was laughing maniacally during the Super Bowl.

MP3: Of Montreal – Faberge Falls for Shuggie [buy]

Muxtape is back up and running in its new format.

The website, initially conceived to allow users to upload music mixes to share with other users, was shut down for the past few months due to legal issues. A lengthy letter appeared on the site towards the end of last year explaining issues with record companies and the RIAA.

The site’s creator, Justin Oullette, decided to take the site in a new direction focusing on bands that are willing to showcase their work on the site.

The new site, still in its test phase, features 12 bands. The site maintains its clean colorful appearance and lists bands such as: Francis and the Lights, Cexman and Dan Deacon.

Along with a few songs muxtape.com includes a link to full page that includes concert dates, concert dates, music videos and links.

Users will still be able to create mixes of their favorite artists, according to the site. Eventually the site will open up to bands who want to sign up for free.

While nowhere near as versatile and vast as the original site, the new muxtape.com shows some serious promise. It looks to serve the site’s core purpose of serving to bring new and undiscovered music to listeners around the globe.

I was a bit slow in catching up with this, but I kind of have an obligation considering I’ve been following the story of Muxtape here on njv for a while. The latest chapter being – Muxtape is up an happening with their new format. As the CEO – Justin Oulette says, it’s “a minimalist platform for bands to promote their music and listeners to create mixes”.

The guys seem to be still just testing the system out, so I suppose it will be still a bit of while until we see any action at all in terms of utilising the site. But nevertheless it looks promising despite being a little restrictive due to those evil major record companies.

Some of the artists who seem to have given permission for their tracks are a good bunch – people like Girl Talk, Francis And The Lights, Reggie Watts and Amanda Palmer have some great tracks up online to just listen to. Head off there and check it out also for the lesser known acts (artists like Cexman and Adron) which have caught my ear and I’ll probably write about more about those guys on njv in the future.

Muxtape website

..and I thought it was bad enough when TicketMaster acquired TicketExchage.

Here’s the most recent update on the possible merger.

Can’t wait till The Big 4 Record Labels merge with Live Nation Ticketmaster + MySpace + Facebook + Madonna + Amazon + iTunes + All Music + + Miley Cyrus + YouTube + Napster + Best Buy + Future Shop + Jay-Z + Josh Schwartz + Rolling Stone

..and then Pitchfork Media decides to merge with The Bloggers + Insound + Radiohead + TMT + The Hype Machine +  Animal Collective + Muxtape + The Torrent Trackers + Sonic Youth + Archive.org + I <3 Music

Or will Google and Apple and Facebook decide to team up with team indie?

And who will get Twitter & Wikipedia ???

*The Economy: The economy is fucked. Here’s a long NYT magazine article on “The Big Fix,” Obama’s options in reforging America’s institutions.

*Journey: Arnel Pineda, Journey’s new lead singer, rocked the faces of America’s corporate elite at the Super Bowl pre-game. According to reliable sources. Well, sources.

*Mixes: The Daily Swarm interview’s Justin Ouliette on the new Muxtape – “If you’re a band, Muxtape will be the place to do all these things as a complete alternate to MySpace. Or if nothing else, as an alternative to having a web geek in your band.” Sorry, web geeks.

*Football: You can rate Super Bowl commercials at Thummit. (Re-watch them here, too.) [somewhat frank]

*Writing: Remembering John Updike at the New Yorker. I never knew him.

*Twitter: How Twitter Was Born.

*Local: Norm Coleman vs. Rod Blagojevich. Wow. “I can’t think of a good reason why Rod Blagojevich has become the most hated man in America while Norm Coleman still walks the streets with his head held high.” [minnpost]

Music-sharing site Muxtape has returned after it was forced to close down in August 2008. Founder Justin Ouellette had been unable to agree a licensing deal with major record labels and recording industry officials in America.

The old Muxtape site allowed all users to upload music, but only artists will be able to on the new version. Anyone registered will still be able to create their own virtual mixtapes and share them online.

The site is still being tested and when it’s fully functioning again music will only be available to stream. Ouellette, who runs Muxtape with business partner Luke Crawford, eventually wants bands to sell downloads, tickets and merchandise on the site.

So far 12 artists are helping with the re-launch, including Dan Deacon, Girl Talk and of Montreal.    

Last week also saw the re-launch of Napster in the UK. The new version is web-based, so users can access there Napster library by logging in on any computer.

Music site The Lipster has started using the ‘SoundCloud’ widget to collect MP3s sent to them by readers. Unfortunately it can’t be used on WordPress yet but it looks like a useful way of sharing music online, like Flickr is for photos.

True story.