The one music site I love more than Pandora and music blogs like Hype Machine and Stereogum might just have to be Muxtape. With these things, there’s always the wonder of discovering new music you might never have encountered on your own. Sure, there is a tried-and-tested security blanket feel to Pandora, and a hip wisdom-of-the-crowd logic to Hype Machine’s aggregation of the music blogging elite, but there is a fuzzy charm to Muxtape’s simple twelve-song playlist interface. Sure, you have no control over what you’re listening to, other than seeing other people’s track lists and pressing play to listen to them. But what endeared me to Muxtape was precisely that. Somewhere on this site, there were mixes waiting to be discovered, soundtracks for rainy days, or driving by, or songs to simply space out to.
Somewhere on this site, I put what I thought then to be the soundtrack of my life (oh please, you have one too), and found myself grateful for the familiarity of music I’d memorized every note to every now and then when I wasn’t in front of my computer. Most of all, I reveled in the discovery of other muxtapes, finding my fingers thumping out the address to mixes I’d grown accustomed to keeping on repeat during spare moments.
But then, as with all good music inventions these days, Muxtape had to shut down. And with it, all the good times you associate with a photo booth and a group of five friends jammed into it. Now, don’t get me wrong: I take a great interest in intellectual property rights and the protection of such rights in this new, uncontrollable space that is the internet. But I think that there is nothing to be gained by tightly policing the music market, and sincerely believe that the industry will be shot if it continues to move oppressively backwards in this new, social age.
There is reason to what the RIAA is fighting for. But I think that any argument to be made on the purported tragedy of the digital commons falls apart when faced with the widespread innovation that the open everything movement inspires.
Muxtape said it is relaunching itself soon, but owing to a falling out over getting a deal, it cannot resurrect the old platform. What the new Muxtape will be is a way for bands to present their own music, in free mixes and playlists for anyone to play. Sure, it’s not the Muxtape we all loved, but all is not lost. What remains is “the most interesting aspect of interconnected music: discovering new stuff.“
Filed under: music , digital commons, music
