So after much hemming and hawing, I've decided to kick around Muxtape. You see, i've come across some old tapes and playlists that i've done in times past (I guess you can call them mixtapes, but there was no real mixing involved). I wanted to find a place or two where I could put them up and link them to the blog for any number of reasons. Not saying that there might be any additional segments to the site, but you never know what may come. Anyway, I've found other such websites, but they either need the song to be already on the net or you need to have your music on a site or space you're in control of. Well, I can't always find songs on the net using sites like Seeqpod, Skreemr, Mixwit, or Grooveshark lite (though Grooveshark has been having a better average so far), and I don't have a spot of that I can just store stuff in the cloud...yet. I'm looking into something, but that's for later. Right about now....

Muxtape is a website wherein one can put up a quick, and I use the word quick loosely (you'll see), playlist for the world to share in...Well at least your friends or whoever you send the link to or sees it. There are other site that probably do this better and will let you embed something on your own site, but this is a quick dirty job, with a fairly clean interface.

After you sign up, (its free), you can start uploading MP3 tracks or do what little customizing of your page that you are given. This means you can title, caption or change the password and color of the page. Simple. But let's get to the meat of it. Muxtape is cool for it's simplicity, but some annoyances at the same time. You've got a 12 song limit and you can only load MP3s for now. No problem there, but you can only upload them one at a time. This is not such a bad thing if it wasn't for the fact that some times you get an error in the midst of uploading a song and have to start again. There is a 24MB limit per track but I don't know too many MP3s that will exceed this. Once you get your songs in there, you can rearrange them, rename the track, or delete the track if you don't think it fits, which you probably would have done before uploading songs. And once you delete a track, it's gone unless you upload it again. By the way, the speed of the upload depends on the speed of your internet connection. Don't think you'll be trying this on Dial up. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Rearranging songs is easy, just drag and drop the track where you want it. Doesn't really get easier. Once done, sit back and enjoy the mix (or mux). Once you get to your playlist page, you can click on a track and listen away. You get the names of the track which, I believe, comes off of the ID3 tags of the MP3 unless you change the name after uploading. This reminds me of a pet peeve with MP3 tagging, but that's for another post. Anyway, let's get to controls. You can click a track start/stop a track and/or click on in another track. That's about it. No rewind, no fast forward. No wire hangers. If you start a track and let it play on through, it'll go to the next one automatically. You can see how much time the song is under the name and a counter to the right of the song. Also, if you were listening to someone elses Mux and like the song that's playing, you can buy it by clicking the 'buy this MP3' link under the title.

If you know of someone else with a muxtape, you can favorite there mux at the top right. They can do likewise and you can see the ones you've favorited when you log in. One thing I've noticed is that in the terms of service, they say that once you you upload a track, they can use it. I have little problem with this, but I've not seen what they do with the track and/or whether it stays with them should you delete the track.

And speaking of deleting, This brings up the thing that peeves me out about the site. Suppose you are tired of the mux that you've made and want to another one. No problem, just delete it and start fresh with a new one....oookay, and what does one do if one wants to recall an old mux. Guess what, you're SOL unless you delete and reload it! You can't have more than one muxtape ever (Unless you have multiple logins). That's bunk! I would really like to see the ability to keep at least 5 muxes around, but maybe the internet music license strikes again. Who knows.

Now you may be asking yourself, I wonder how can I find a particular artist or song in someone's muxtape. Well, look no further than Muxtape Stumbler. I don't think it has anything to do with the folks at muxtape, but it doesn't matter. Muxtape Stumbler, as you would expect, is a music search engine using muxtape as the playground. this way, you can find songs and there by finding new muxtapes to discover, as opposed to the ones you see on the front page of the site. Now if there was an alternate way to get the mp3's this would be a dangerous combination. it's just as well there isn't. you should really support the artists and but the songs anyway. What would also be cool is if they had support for Last.FM, which I hear is coming.(EDIT: as of the day after I originally posted this (probably the day of) Muxtape now has Last.FM integration. You first have to logon and link it to your Last.FM account. Then while you're logged in to Muxtape, you can scrobble any songs you listen to.

(EDIT)
Came across an app that let's you have Muxtape up without going to the site in a browser. It's called Muxtape on AIR. It's made with Adobe's AIR platform, so if you don't already have it, you will have to download it and install it before installing MoA. This is cool if you don't feel like having a browser open or don't want to have Muxtape in a browser while surfing. haven't checked this out yet, but I will.


Well, that's about it except for one thing from the 'You should have saw this coming' file: If you care to check out MY muxtape, you can go here. What's there now may not be new to a couple of you, but if it is, enjoy it. It was something I put together a few months ago, just for giggles. Plus, if you should happen to see this post sometime from now and the content has changed, hopefully, it'll still be good. And while this defeats the purpose of sending you there, you can download the mix (if you liked it) from here:




Now before you ask me why I'm using Pando, 1) is because I like it, and 2)Mediafire wasn't playing right and zshare...I just didn't try. There you go.