Click to watch the video.
The RIAA shutting down Muxtape story still has me seething as it is emblematic of more than just wrong-headed thinking within the recording industry; it goes against the very grain of music discovery that leads to music sales. Terrestrial radio used to fulfill this need very well until it became co-opted by big enterprises that worried only about the bottom line. These companies do not pay for “needle time” as radio stations do in Europe – a royalty that is paid to artists in return for playing their music on air. There are performance rights for sure but they go only to the song writers and publishers. Why then does Muxtape, a service that provided a stream of songs [not downloads] get shut down? A deal could have been reached I’m sure and as Justin, the guy behind Muxtape, pointed out he was willing to negotiate but “….. I got a call from the VP of anti-piracy at one of the majors. After I picked up the phone his first words were, “Justin, I just have one question for you: where do I send the summons and complaint?†How do you negotiate with someone who opens the discussion like that?
And yet, as is often the case, when bright people are threatened by less intelligent intransigent folks, they look for a work around. Justin seems to have found one – “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.”
The first beneficiary appears to be Francis And The Lights. Found on Muxtape, digital EP bought by me for $5.00, a video for my readers to watch and download. The RIAA is a sinking ship of fools….
Whilst I generally agree with your opinions about muxtape, it is worth realising that it was very easy to download MP3s off Muxtape. All it took was a greasemonkey script.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:30 pmSure, but then the same script can probably do its work everywhere there’s a stream right? Music online in all of its different forms can certainly be grabbed but I’d argue the best thing about Muxtape was the pleasure of sharing playlists…music lovers do that all the time digitally just as once they made cassette mixes for their friends. The losers here are artists who won’t get heard…thanks to the RIAA.
October 14th, 2008 at 6:59 pmwhen we made real mix tapes in the 90s we were also buying every album from the artists that were on these tapes we shared. pearl jam, new order, weezer, smiths, etc. the staggering part is that we were only sharing boring mainstream label bands. imagine the exposure that muxtape could provide? we could be buying albums all along the spectrum of the tail. short and long. riaa in its own culture of fear is squashing real artist revenue.
October 14th, 2008 at 11:03 pmBy the time the RIAA cracked down on Muxtape, everyone had already moved on to Mixwit, which is much prettier and more fun to use anyways.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:51 pmtheir next target: mixwit.com?
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:06 amWhat I am INFINITELY curious about, and for whatever reason has NOT really been brought up on the P-Moose, is how the new jacked-up economy is dorking up the orbit of all this stuff—the Long Tail, the notion of “free” driving music sales, the entire concept in light of the fact that our economic outlook is as cheery as a bell ringer during the black plague.
Many of us recognize that during an economic free fall, people still spend money on their vices and entertainments, so perhaps this questioning is moot, but I still long to hear to opinions of the tastemakers in this space on what’s going down behind the scenes and where the indies stand to win or lose in all the panic and such…
PS. The RIAA is doomed for the very reasons they went after Muxtape. What a gaggle of ostriches! But we knew that….I’m just chiming in.
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:39 pm@Joe, good question but you kind of answered it yourself. During the economic bleak periods music sales, along with beer, tend to trend up as folks spend their money on things that give them simple pleasures. Ironically, given the fuss over music pricing that tended to drive the idea of downloading, i.e the CD is too expensive, I wonder if sales of music from iTunes, Amazon etc will follow the same historical upwards path during this recession or will they stay fairly flat as people aren’t buying as much music anyway?
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:05 amWhether indies win or lose in this scenario might be a topic I could bring up on my panel at CMJ this afternoon….